


More Than a Feeling

by Ademas



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Psychic Abilities, Reader-Insert, Sam Winchester Has a Soul, Soulless Sam Winchester
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-17
Updated: 2018-09-20
Packaged: 2018-10-20 00:48:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 28
Words: 117,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10651518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ademas/pseuds/Ademas
Summary: You met Sam and Dean Winchester when they saved you from a routine spirit back in 2007 (Season 2), and in the months and years that followed, a relationship bloomed between you and the younger brother. When Sam was high on demon blood, his powers at their strongest, he unintentionally passed some psychic abilities to you. You manifested as an empath, able to feel others' emotions, especially Sam's. But it all stopped when Sam went into the Cage.Now, a year and a half later, you're living abroad in an attempt to put everything behind you. But those abilities are waking up again, and something is pulling you back to the United States, back to a life you swore you were done with.You guess you'd always known it wouldn't last. You just didn't expect Sam to be alive, or for Heaven and Hell to have already cooked up another Armageddon-level debacle to drag you and the Winchesters back into.(This is an Alternate Season 6, though some elements of later seasons, such as the MOL Bunker, do show up.)





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This is something I've been working on for--quite literally--years. It's a strange little brainchild that started in the summer between seasons 5 and 6 (I mean it--years) and progressed over time, sat neglected for many months, and only reemerged in the past year after I re-watched the entire series. I have tried to stay as close to canon as possible and true to the characters despite this being an AU. I hope you'll forgive my shortcomings, as I'm sure there are many.
> 
> A note on the empath: More will become clear in time, but basically she could feel Sam's emotions almost like her own, and anyone else's with focus and concentration. In this universe, being an empath means you're also in-tune with what's going on around you: Like ESP, you get "feelings" about something, like strong gut instincts. 
> 
> Sam appears at the end of Chapter 3. It's a slow build, but worth it.

There was nothing left for me in the states after Sam Winchester saved the world. 

Dean and I stayed together for as long as it took for me to get a Visa, and then we parted ways mostly silently.There was nothing to say beyond a half-hearted promise to keep loosely in touch before he found his way to Cicero. There was too much pain shared between us for either one of us to bear each other’s company very long.

So after the world almost ended, I hopped on a plane to Costa Rica.

I’d found a course earning a TEFL certification, and once I’d completed the program I’d found a job teaching English in Alajuela, where I lived with a local Tica woman, Vera, in the neighborhood of La Trinidad.

It was a struggle at first, adjusting to the climate, the culture. Everything from the language to the daily rainstorms, the lack of air conditioning, the odd meal times, the lizards skittering across the walls. At least I could that’s what I could say the struggle was. Truthfully, I knew it was the strangeness of living without the fear of Armageddon and demons and death and destruction. It was the oddity of moving slowly and without real stress. But the people were warm, the fruit was always fresh, and the sky and the mountains breathtaking, and slowly all the darkness that had festered into a tightly-wound ball in my chest started to fade away.

He was always in the back of my mind, of course, never far from my thoughts. But I was healing. I was moving forward. And most days I could almost forget where he was and what he’d done, the reason why the world was still here. Nearly eighteen months after the end, I was finally able to start breathing again.

And then the dreams started.

* * *

 

In the darkness of early morning, I was shaken awake.

  
“Y/N,” he said. “Y/N, despiertase.”  
  
Groggily, I pulled myself out of unconsciousness and found myself peering into dark chocolate pools. Roberto.

I groaned and sat up. “What’s wrong?” I said.  
  
“You were dreaming,” he said. “It sounded like a nightmare.”

I glanced across the room to the other bed. Tomás was still asleep and snoring lightly, one arm thrown over his face. Beside me, Emilia was curled on her side, her head under the pillow. “They slept through it?”  
  
He nodded. “I was up already.” His brows furrowed in concern. “You ok?"

I sighed and stood up, wrapping one of the blankets around my shoulders. The night air was still chilly. “Yeah,” I said. “I think so. I’m going to take a walk.”

“Do you mind if I come?”

I shook my head and slipped into some sandals, and we walked out of the hotel room and headed down toward the beach.

The four of us worked in the same school: Roberto and Tomás were locals and taught math and science, respectively. Emilia (Emily was her given name) was from London and also taught English. We’d been given a week off between the end of the summer sessions and the beginning of the fall semester, and we had taken the opportunity to visit Guanacaste, where we’d booked a room at a hotel facing the Pacific ocean. 

It was practically paradise.

The sand was cold on my feet as we walked along the water. There was still maybe an hour or two before dawn; the sun would rise opposite the ocean, beyond the mountains, so it would be awhile until the sun could crest the peaks. I didn’t mind. The blue pre-dawn light was comforting.

“Can I ask what you were dreaming about? It sounded bad.”  
  
I shrugged but otherwise didn’t respond. What _had_ I been dreaming about? It hadn’t been the old nightmare--those had all but faded into obscurity--no, it had been something else, but it wasn’t something concrete. Just darkness, water, a feeling of urgency, a city skyline…

“No recuerdo,” I said. “Did I say anything?”

Roberto was silent a moment, then quietly said, “You kept saying a name.”

I stopped walking and stared at him. “What name?” I said curtly.  
  
He took off his baseball cap, ran a hand through his hair and put it back on. “Sam,” he said, not looking at me. “You kept saying you had to find Sam.”  
  
My mouth suddenly felt dry. I tried to swallow and found I couldn’t. 

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know he was--I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

I coughed. “It’s fine. It’s--it was just a dream. It doesn’t matter.” I dug a toe into the sand. Then I sat down, leaning back on my elbows and facing the waves, not sure if I was relieved or disappointed that I couldn’t remember any details of the dream.  
  
After a beat, Roberto joined me. I didn’t look at him, but I could feel him studying me, the way he did when he thought I wasn’t aware. I knew how he felt; the Tico heart couldn’t easily conceal emotion, and we both knew he was just waiting for any sign that I was coming around.

And maybe I would, eventually. But how I could let him into all of that baggage when it was still so raw to me, and would be unbelievable to him, was beyond me.

“You still love him?”  
  
I sighed and closed my eyes, letting the cool sea breezes sweep my hair back from my face. “He’s gone.”

“We have a song here,” Roberto said. “About a bull who loves the moon, though he can only truly be near her reflection.”  
  
“And?”  
  
“The bull never stops loving the moon, no matter how impossible it is.” 

I blinked and turned to him. He was looking up at the moon now, the last remnants of it before sunrise. I wasn’t sure what he meant--was he excusing my feelings or confessing his own?

I stood up, brushing sand off of my shorts. “Let’s go back,” I said. “Get some  café.”

It had been a year, I reminded myself, and things were good here. No matter what I was dreaming, it was nothing but that: a dream, a wisp of memories regurgitated by the subconscious. Nothing more. 

As we walked up the beach back toward the hotel, I slipped my hand into Roberto’s. He didn’t say anything, just gave it a light squeeze. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught the smallest of smiles on his face. 

The little  cafetería was just opening for breakfast when we reached the hotel. We sat down and ordered coffee, then made our way to the buffet table for fruit and Gallo Pinto, the traditional dish of rice and beans and spices I could never quite place. By the time we returned to the table, Emilia and Tomás had joined us. 

“You’re up early,” I noted.

“Says the girl who got up before sunrise,” Tomás said with a grin. “Where were you guys?”

“Went for a walk,” Roberto said simply. Emilia raised her eyebrows and took a sip of coffee. 

I gazed across the ocean again. It was a perfect aquamarine, streaked with gold down the middle as the morning sun struck it. Whatever I’d been dreaming about, it had already been whisked away, replaced by the complete serenity of the ocean.  
  
What was it Stephen King had said about the Pacific? It was something from _The Shawshank Redemption_ : That it had no memory. 

Costa Rica was forgiving, warm, and the year in the rainforest and the mountains and the ocean had done wonders when it came to erasing what I needed to forget. I felt I could stay here, keep building on this life, and never look back. 

I caught Roberto’s eye and he winked. I smiled.

Yeah. I could stay here.


	2. Chapter 2

Things were quiet through September, if somewhat hectic with a new group of students and the start of a new school year. It was a good chaos, though, and I was glad for the focus and the drive, the routine and the constant presence of hopeful people all around me.

At the start of October, I was teaching one of my more stubborn classes of 13 year olds some United States Geography in an attempt to one, make them a little more worldly, and two, teach them the cardinal directions. I was having mixed results.

“Okay so here,” I said, pointing with a ruler, “is la costa este--the east coast. Where is the capital of the United States?”  
  
Several voices chorused back, “In the east coast.”  
  
“On the east coast,” I corrected gently. “Now what--” I was suddenly struck with an intense feeling of deja-vu. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up and I found myself staring at New England.  
  
“Senorita?” I shook myself and turned back to the class. 

“Lo siento!” I chirped, possibly too brightly. “I just got distracted. Now, let’s talk about the Northeast…”

Class continued without interruption from there. By the end of the day, I’d all but forgotten whatever weird feeling I’d experienced.  
  
That night, I dreamed again: the water, the darkness, a skyline I didn’t recognize, and a growing sense of urgency. This time, I woke myself up with a start, and lay staring at the ceiling, listening to the frogs and insects outside in the garden before sitting up and dragging myself out of bed.

Without even knowing why, I booted up my laptop, opened up Google and typed in “U.S. East Coast Map.” I spent the next five minutes staring at colorful pixels before I realized what I was doing.  
  
“What the fuck?” I muttered, shaking my head to clear it. I rubbed my eyes, feeling a headache starting, and opened my e-mail.

Amazon, work, but otherwise...nothing. I blinked. What had I expected, anyway?

I climbed back into bed and threw an arm over my face. Tomorrow would be a long day.

It was. I was short on sleep and short on patience, and I couldn’t help pulling out the U.S. map and tracing my finger over the borders of the east coast states.

“Are you okay?”

I glanced up from my scrutiny of Pennsylvania. Roberto stood at my classroom door. “Huh? Oh. Yeah. I’m good. Just tired.”

“Bad dreams again?”  
  
I shrugged. “Not really,” I said, which was mostly true. “Just couldn’t sleep.”

“You still want ice cream?” he said. “My treat.”

I grinned. “Absolutely,” I said.

Over ice cream, he said, “So I was wondering.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Oh?”

“Well…” he started. “I thought that maybe, for Christmas, you’d want to take a trip with me. To see my family in La Fortuna. See the waterfall and Arenal, the volcano.”

My eyes bugged. “Are you kidding me?! Of course!”

He laughed. “My family has a big reunion every Navidad. I know they’d love to meet you.”

“You don’t have to convince me,” I said, grin plastered across my face. 

“Then it’s a date,” he said, and squeezed my hand.

* * *

A few nights later, the same dream. Water. Darkness. Urgency. Except this time, instead of just a skyline, I saw a pier lit up with carnival lights and a ferris wheel. I was racing across the water toward it, my fingers skimming the surface of the waves as I pelted toward it.

I sat bolt upright with a gasp. My heart was pounding.

I went to my laptop. Turned it on. Opened Google. Without thinking, I typed in “US East Coast Ferris Wheels.”

Buzzfeed articles. Tourist attraction lists. Images that didn’t match what I couldn’t get out of my head. 

_ What the hell? _

Again the feeling of deja-vu washed over me, and this time I couldn’t shake it. But yet...it wasn’t  _ quite _ deja-vu. There was some strange, cold familiarity, but at the same time...something I couldn’t recognize. A call, a drive, a pull…

I opened my e-mail. Nothing new.  _ What did you expect to find? _

I realized I was shivering, and a sheen of sweat had broken out on my skin. I went back to google. I kept clicking. Suddenly, I typed in “Atlantic City.”

There it was.

Same water. Same skyline. Same Ferris Wheel. 

I slammed the laptop shut and paced the room. Then I sat down on the edge of the bed and forced myself to breathe.

Okay. Alright. It didn’t mean anything. People dream of places they’ve seen and people they’ve seen all the time. That’s normal. My brain was just reconstructing things I’d seen before, and I happened to dream about a pier, and I know about Atlantic City, so I just filled it in.  
  
Except...I knew better. And it didn’t feel quite like that. It felt like…

It felt a little like someone had tied a string to my intestines and was tugging on them from across the room.

I laid back down, curling on my side and pulling the covers up to my chin. I didn’t know what this was, and I didn’t like it.

* * *

As October transitioned into November, the dreams became more frequent, more vivid, and more urgent. They started taking over my waking mind, too, and I often found myself pouring over maps of Atlantic City, or drifting to airline websites before catching myself and snapping out of it.

One day after work, Roberto asked me what was wrong.

I shook my head. “I don’t know,” I said. And then, abruptly and without thinking, I blurted, “I need to go back to the states.”

He blinked. “What? Why?”

I stood up and started gathering my things. “I don’t know” I said. “I can’t explain it. I just--there’s something. I have a feeling.”

He followed me out the door of my classroom. “You have a  _ feeling _ ?”

Did I really sound that crazy? Didn’t matter. “Yeah. Like a gut feeling. I don’t know.” I hurried to the main office. “I need to talk to Miguel.”

Miguel was our boss. I didn’t know exactly what I was going to tell him, but I owed him some notice at least.

“Whoa, Y/N, slow down,” Roberto said, putting a hand on my arm. “You’re not making any sense. Is something wrong?”

I looked him in the eye, read his concerned, almost afraid expression, and lied so easily I almost thought it was the truth. “My grandfather is sick.”

His face fell. “Oh,” he said. “I’m so sorry. What do you need?”

I glanced away. “A ride to the airport tomorrow, if you could.”

I couldn’t meet his eyes after that, but I heard the twinge of sadness in his voice when he said, “Of course. Just tell me when.”

I went in and dropped the news to Miguel, apologizing profusely, though I didn’t feel guilty at all. I didn’t feel anything but the intense need to be back--something I hadn’t felt even once since leaving the country.

I went home, booked the first flight out tomorrow, and then I packed what I needed and left what I didn’t. I didn’t think about what I was doing, so I wasn’t sure if I expected to come back for the rest of it, or if I expected to never need it again.

“I will be sorry to see you go,” Vera said. “It’s been nice to have some company.”

I offered a half-smile. “I’m sorry to go, too.”

“Family is important, though,” she said. 

The following morning it was a long, silent drive to the airport in San José. Roberto parked the car and got out, grabbing my one duffel bag. “You packed light,” he noted, sounding hopeful.

“Yeah,” I said, taking it from him. “I didn’t think I’d need much.”

He smiled, reached for me, and pulled me into a tight hug. “I’ll miss you,” he said. “When will you be back?”

“Hopefully soon,” I said, and I had no idea whether it was false hope, real hope, or a flat out lie. I knew nothing but the absolute need to be in New Jersey. 

“I hope by Christmas.” He was sad. It was plastered all over his face. I hated that, felt for him, and at the same time I didn’t feel anything. 

“Me too,” I said, and I kissed him on the cheek. “I’ll see you soon.”  Unable to stand waiting any longer, feeling twinges of guilt for what I was putting him through, I turned and went into the airport. 

It was a long, eight-hour flight with a brief layover in Fort Lauderdale, and the longer I sat on the plane the stronger that pull got. The gentle tug at my intestines now felt more like I was being dragged by a large, untrained dog. 

I landed a little after 7 p.m., grabbed a taxi, and checked into the Superlodge Atlantic City. It was a two star motel, but at $16 a night, I couldn’t complain. I stuck around long enough to drop off my duffel bag and throw on a hoodie before I was out the door, drawn to the pier.

It was chilly, the first of November, and the wind coming off the ocean was frigid. I wasn’t used to the cold, but it was invigorating, and I quickened my pace, eyes set on the ferris wheel.

I didn’t know where I was going, or what I was doing, but the pier seemed the obvious destination. I walked out under the lights, amidst the bustle of boozing adults and rowdy teenagers. Game booths, rides, whatever top 40 hits were blaring through the speakers...it was such a familiar and typical American scene and after a year of exodus, it felt uncomfortably foreign. It was culture shock in my homeland.  
  
I realized I hadn’t eaten in hours, and it had been years since I’d had good carnival food. I dug a few bucks out of my pocket and stepped up to the white-and-red striped booth and ordered a corn dog and a cherry Coke. 

As I stepped aside to get some mustard, someone brushed into me. I turned, ready to apologize, and froze. 

When I was twelve, I’d been playing in the front yard when a man walking by had stopped at the end of my driveway and said, “Excuse me, have you seen a little dog? He’s white with brown spots, and I can’t find him.”

I’d frozen then, too, the hairs on my neck standing up and my heart pounding. In school they’d warned us about people asking to help them find pets, but this was more than that: something about him felt  _ wrong. _ I’d managed to stutter out “No” before going into the back yard and shutting the gate, but I’d peered out at him from between the slats in the fence and he hadn’t gone until a neighbor had yelled at him to leave.

There was nothing threatening about  _ this  _ man; he was maybe 30, wore a pair of jeans and an open jacket over a t-shirt. But looking at him, I felt the same gut reaction as I had when I was young: danger.

“S-sorry,” I stammered. 

He flashed a devilish grin. “No problem!” he said, and reached for a bottle of ketchup.

I abandoned the mustard and got the hell out of there, spinning away more quickly than is typically socially acceptable and not caring. When I was a ways away, I pitched the corn dog, too. I’d lost my appetite.

I glanced over my shoulder. He was gone, lost in the crowd, and I scolded myself for my childishness, reminding myself that last time I’d been in the United States, I’d had good reason to distrust everyone. Things were different now. I needed to get a grip on reality.

And yet…

I kept walking, mostly aimlessly, scanning the faces around me as I went.

I saw him again as I passed near the Ring Toss, standing on the opposite side of the path, watching me.

I kept going in a straight line, then ducked behind a tent and moved perpendicular to him, keeping my head low and sticking to the shadows of booths as much as I could.

Instinct--or divine providence, or whatever-- told me to head West, inland, so I did, following that unnatural pull.

I glanced behind me. He was still following, staying far enough back that it could’ve been mistaken as coincidence.

I didn’t believe in that shit anymore.

“Fucking hell,” I muttered. “I did not leave paradise for more of this shit.”

I’d left the pier now and made a sharp turn off the road and into an alleyway, planning to cut over to the next block and hail a cab or slip into a store or something--anything--to throw him off my tail.

I’d reached the end of the alleyway when I turned around again. He wasn’t following me. I must’ve lost him.

Releasing a breath, I faced forward again and turned the corner.

I nearly ran into a woman, tall, raven-haired. I stopped. “I--”

She grinned. Her teeth were too white. Her eyes were black pools.

“Gotcha,” she smirked. I felt a blow to the back of my head and everything went dark.

 


	3. Chapter 3

I came to in a dark, damp room with my hands bound above my pounding head. 

I blinked and groaned, straining to see in the dim light. My shoulders ached, and when I tried to move my arms I realized they were shackled to a chain suspended from the ceiling. Something was poking me in the arm, on the other side of my elbow, and I felt light-headed. My toes barely scraped the hard, slick ground. Concrete?

As my eyes adjusted, I could make out a few more shapes: I was in a windowless room, and I wasn’t alone. I could see the silhouettes of maybe six other people, bound the same way I was.

“Hey,” I rasped out. “Pst,  _ hey _ !”

“Hey,” a girl’s voice responded. “Welcome to the club.”

“Where are we? Who are they?”

“Fucking psychos,” she spat. “It’s like something out of  _ Wrong Turn _ .”

“Are they...eating people?”

“No,” she said. “Taking blood.”

Was it an IV in my arm, then? My head was fuzzy. I wondered if it was blood loss or if I’d been drugged, too. “How long have you guys been here? Has anyone tried to escape? How many of them?”

“You’re taking this a little too well,” said a man’s voice to my right. 

I sighed. Well hell, wasn’t that the truth? Old habits die hard, I guess. But I was pissed that I’d followed some psycho impulse to fly to Atlantic City and ended up thrown instantly back into the old lifestyle. That couldn’t be a coincidence. 

“I’m Jack. I’ve been here three days,” he continued. “Liz has been here about that long. I think there’s maybe a dozen of us. The others have been here around a week. They’re...pretty far gone.”

I wasn’t about to end up in the “pretty far gone” category. “How do we get out?”

He gave an empty laugh. “Think we’d be here if we knew? There’s a lot of them, as far as we can tell, but they’re fast, and they’re strong.”

I groaned. Fucking demons. “So...are they taking a lot at once? How’s this work?”

“They take it in spurts,” he says. “They’ll come down, start an IV drip, let you bleed. Come back, stop it, take the blood, give you a fluid IV to recuperate, and repeat.”

I groaned. That was different, and decidedly weird. I winched as I turned my wrists back and forth and they tingled as circulation came back to my fingers. I could feel the chain I was tied to, and I gripped it tightly. I pushed off the ground with my toes, shoving myself backward to get momentum, and then pulled up my knees and rocked back and forth, kicking my legs out as if I were on a swingset.

“What’re you doing?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Something? Anything?”

“Tried it,” he said. “The chains are solid. the most you’ll do is maybe rip out the needle.”

I was swinging freely back and forth now, but so far all that was accomplishing was to make my shoulders ache more. I stopped, planted my feet as much as was possible, and then shook the chain as hard as I could. The rattle echoed off the walls, but the chain held.

“It’s useless,” Liz said. 

“Do you have any idea where we are?” I asked. 

“I think we’re in a big basement,” Jack said. “Concrete floor, damp, dark. They let light in when they come down. But it’s a big room. Echoes.”

It definitely was echoey. “Can’t be too far from the pier, right?” I asked. “Is that where they snagged you two?”

“Yeah,” he said. 

I felt around the chain again, felt a small keyhole in the shackles, and wondered if I’d be able to pick it. 

“Does anybody have a bobby pin?” I asked, then wondered, “How far apart are we?” I pushed myself on my toes as far as I could without losing contact with the ground and stretched my leg out to the left. “Stretch your leg toward me, Liz.”

I heard her shuffling around, but couldn’t make contact. “Damn,” I said.

Suddenly, there was a loud “thunk” followed by the squeal of rusting hinges and light flooded the room. I squinted my eyes shut and got the briefest glimpse of my surroundings: Liz and Jack were about five feet to either side of me, and to the sides of them,spaced throughout the room, were several more bodies in various stages of consciousness. 

Two silhouettes came down a set of stairs, then shut the door, and we were plunged back into darkness. 

I barely made out one of them go to one of the hostages closest to the door, and the felt the other stop in front of me. I could just make out the outline of his face: a sharp jaw and angular cheekbones. “Thought you’d lost me, didn’t you?” he sneered. He reached up and stroked a finger down my cheek. 

I cringed away. “Christo,” I spat. 

He recoiled with a hiss and growled, a low, animalistic sound, covering his ears and cowering. Across the room, the other one shrieked and I heard a crash as she stumbled backward. In a moment, though, the one in front of me leapt back up and grabbed my shoulder, nails digging into my skin. “You know a little something, do you?” he chuckled.  
  
I squirmed, kicking out at him, and he backhanded me across the face so hard I saw stars. 

He took advantage of my daze and fiddled with the IV in my arm. He stepped back, holding a bag of what I assumed was my blood, tapped me on the chin and chuckled.

“Teach you to fight back,” he laughed, then gave me a shove and turned around, regrouping with the woman and heading toward the door.

“Son of a BITCH!” I shouted after the door slammed shut. My arm felt chilly. I figured that was fluids going in this time.

“What did you do?” Liz whispered, sounding afraid. “What just happened?”

“She pissed them off, is what she did,” Jack retorted, angry. 

“Does it matter?” I snapped. “Either way we’re still stuck here!”

“It does if they decide to bring the boss down,” Jack said.

I was too pissed to care. “The boss?”

I heard him readjust. “Yeah. Their ringleader, or whatever. Big guy. Mean.”

“Ruthless,” Liz added. “The rest of them are afraid of him.”

I swallowed. That was too-familiar of a set up. Too similar to what I’d left a year and a half ago. “Look,” I said. “We’re dealing with demons. I don’t know what’s going on, but they fear the name of God. In Latin. It’s  _ Christo _ .”

Silence. Then, “What?”

I sighed. I felt groggy and irritated. “Just trust me on this one.”

“So what do we do, sing Latin Jesus at them?” Jack barked. “That obviously worked really well for you.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I need to think.” But it was getting more and more difficult to think at all, and I was fighting off sleep. I didn’t have much to go on, and I seriously doubted there was a rescue party coming--no one who would be able to do anything knew I was even in the country, and I doubted my two companions had any connections, either. If I could remember the exorcism…

That might be something. If I could remember it. 

My eyes slid shut. I slept. 

* * *

When I came to, a thought occurred to me.

“How did you guys end up here?”

Liz coughed and said, “I live in the area. Was walking down the boardwalk one night when they grabbed me.”

“Jack?”

No response. Liz said, “I think he’s out. But he said he’s from out of town. Came in for a few days to get away. Ended up here, same as I did. You?”

I considered what she was saying. “You didn’t have any weird impulses to go out that night? Weird dreams?”

A pause. “No…” she said. “Did you?”

I sighed and tried to stretch with no real luck, feeling achy and cold. “Yeah. Weird dreams the past month….everything telling me to come here, basically.”

“Like empath stuff. Okay.”

Oh. So that was normal to her. That meant… “Are you….?”

“A little. An ESP thing, you know? When I was twelve we rented a house in Pittsburgh and I hated it; always felt like something was there. Sometimes I see things before they happen.”

So we had that in common. “Do you think Jack is?”

“Maybe. He never brought it up. You think?”

“I don’t know what I think,” I admitted. It was hard to focus; I felt like my head had been stuffed with dryer lint.  

“What do they want our blood for?”

I could think of a few things, none of them pleasant. “I don’t know.”

She didn’t say anything for awhile, and we just hung there, listening to the breathing of those around us. “Why do you seem to know so much?” she finally said.

“Um,” I said. “I’ve had some close encounters in the past.”

She let me leave it at that. 

I wracked my brain for the exorcism. I didn’t even know if it would work if I couldn’t trap them, but it was, as of now, the only real option.  _ “Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas…”  _

“What’re you saying?” Liz chimed in.

“It’s Latin,” I said. “It’s an exorcism. But I can’t remember all of it.”

She didn’t respond. I imagined a look of utter confusion on her face and had to chuckle.

I’d been out for a year and a half. Totally out. And now I was right in the thick of it and couldn’t remember the damn exorcism. Dean would be livid.

Huh. That was the first time I’d thought of him since this started. What I wouldn’t give for him to show up, guns blazing, right about now.

But he was out, too.

I kept muttering Latin to myself, remembering bits and pieces the more I said, grasping at it, clinging to it as my only chance of making it out.

Time passed, though I wasn’t sure how much. It was horribly uncomfortable and cold, and the mental strain of trying to focus and not panic was exhausting.

I drifted back out of consciousness at some point, and was only shaken from it when I heard the door squeal open. 

I opened my eyes, blinking at the sudden light. Someone new was coming down; I got a glimpse of a broad-shouldered silhouette before the door slammed shut. 

My pulse quickened as I heard heavy footfalls descend the stairs and begin to pad across the concrete floor toward me. Jack had mentioned a leader, and I instantly regretted pissing off the demons earlier. Fear overtook my senses as adrenaline commanded me to run or fight.

“Heard we had some trouble yesterday,” said a low male voice.

Yesterday? Already? How many times had they switched the IV? Was I draining again?

I felt him in front of me. I swallowed back panic, heart galloping. 

There was a click as he turned on a flashlight and shined it between us. “Let’s take a l--” He stopped, the words cutting off completely. I squinted back into wide hazel eyes framed by shaggy, dark locks. My breath caught.

Sam.  
  
Reality hit. Impossible. No. Not Sam. _Lucifer_.  
  
I screamed, practically roared, and thrashed backwards. I pulled my knees up to my chest and kicked straight forward like a rabbit, nailing him in the thigh. He stumbled forward and I jerked my knees up, clipping the side of his jaw. 

“Get the fuck away from me,” I spat.

He straightened, stepped closer, and grabbed a fistful of my hair at the side of my head, forcing me to look up at him. “Don’t,” he commanded. 

I spit in his face and struggled, but that first scuffle had taken the little energy I had, and I hung limply, chest heaving, head spinning, enraged.

He didn’t move, just stared at me, his eyes wide, bewildered, and searching. Hazel, I noted again. Human. 

_ Lies,  _ I told myself. 

He slowly let go, shined the flashlight on my arm and followed the beam with his eyes. The tube was dark red--they  _ were _ pumping out again. I went back to his face, trying to understand, to comprehend, to rationalize…

He met my eyes again; I saw a storm there. He stared, calculating. I was shaking hard enough to barely rattle the chain but was otherwise paralyzed. He blew out a long breath, let go of me and took a small step back, looked over his shoulder, and clicked off the flashlight. For a moment I considered that I’d dreamed the whole thing, but then his breath blew hot near my ear.

“Trust me,” he whispered, barely audible, and then something hard struck the side of my head.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not a doctor or health professional at all. I don't know how IVs work outside of having given blood myself. For the sake of the story...I'm letting it be.


	4. Chapter 4

The next time I came to, I was horizontal. There was a pillow beneath my head and a heavy blanket covering me.

I sat up quickly--too quickly, I realized, as the world turned on its side. I closed my eyes and gripped the blanket to steady myself, then opened them and looked around the room. 

It was a standard bedroom: queen-sized bed, dresser, nightstand. Various odds and ends--a book, some pens, a stray sock--were scattered throughout, but it was otherwise neat. Heavy drapes were drawn over the room’s only window, and a halo of light pushed through the edges.

My shoes were next to the bed. I glanced down at my arm and there was a strip of gauze tied around my elbow at the IV site.

My head was pounding, and I reached up to touch just above my eye; my fingers grazed a small cut and gingerly walked around the swelling that had ballooned around it.

Then memory came slamming down.

My mouth went dry and I was gripped with the desperate desire to climb out window and run, but I weighed a ton and couldn’t move myself from the bed.

_ He can’t be back. If he is, it isn’t him. _

I didn’t believe in coincidences. I’d been drawn to Atlantic City and captured by demons to find…

My thoughts were interrupted by two low voices from the other side of the door. I froze, feeling that fight or flight response kick into gear again, and glanced at the door, to the window, then back to the door.

Determined, I pulled back the covers and slowly swung my feet over the side of the bed. As slowly and silently as I could, I pulled open the nightstand drawer. It didn’t contain much, but I found what I’d hoped to find: a knife.  
  
My hands were shaking slightly, and my head wasn’t completely settled, but I picked it up, closed the drawer and slowly stood up. I felt fluish, but steady. I padded to the window and peeked out.

I was in a forest, though what gave me pause was the thick line of salt along the sill.

_ “Trust me.” _

The conversation was still happening in the other room. I crossed to the door and placed my ear against the hinges.

“...put us at risk. You have to remedy this.”

“I don’t want her involved.”

“It’s too late for that.”

There was the sound of a chair being pushed back and then footsteps pacing the floor. My palms seemed to have robbed my mouth of any moisture. I thought my heart might burst from my chest as I reached for the doorknob. I had to know and I didn’t want to know.

I opened the door and stepped into an open room that was both a living room and kitchen, modestly furnished with the usual household appliances. But I hardly noticed; Sam was standing with his back to me, hands on the back of chair, leaning on his arms. In a chair to his left, angled away from the table and in my direction, Castiel sat with his hands resting in his lap. I wasn’t sure which of them surprised me more.

Hearing the door open, he looked up and Sam turned around. I froze, left hand on the wall, right gripping the knife like a lifeline.

For a heartbeat, it was like eighteen months hadn’t passed, like he hadn’t been the devil’s vessel, like he hadn’t thrown himself into the Cage. He stood there, looking more like Sam than he had the last time I’d seen him, more human, and my knees threatened to buckle under that weight.

“You’re looking...better,” Castiel noted. My eyes flickered from Sam’s to the angel and once again I was overcome with the sense of being in a time capsule; nothing about him had changed from the trenchcoat right down to the shoes. My brain went into overdrive, trying to rationalize Sam’s reappearance with a gang of demons and Castiel practically having coffee in some backwoods cabin where-- _ oh yeah _ \--I’d just woken up after having my blood pumped by said demons and knocked out by Sam. Who was alive. And standing in front of me.

He took a step toward me and I slid away along the wall, lifting the knife as threateningly as I could as it shook violently in my hand. I felt like I might throw up.   
  
“Explain,” I demanded, or tried to. My voice came out as more of a delicate quaver. I gripped the knife more tightly. 

His eyes darted briefly to the blade and he lifted his hands to the side, palms up, and backed away toward the table. “Okay,” he said, the way one talks to a skittish animal. I wondered briefly just how panicked I looked. “But you should sit down.”

I shook my head and swallowed. My mouth was a desert. “Explain.” I rasped. “How you’re alive, and why you’re with a bunch of demons draining people’s blood.” I swallowed, then added, “And why he’s here.”

Castiel shifted. “I assure you we mean you no harm.”

Sam nodded and lowered into a chair, keeping his movements slow. “It’s kind of a long story.”

I shrugged. “Got time,” I said, though I was leaning pretty heavily on the wall now and the knife was mostly limp in my hand.

I saw him calculating. He sighed. “They told me I could get out if I led an army,” he explained, his voice soft, his eyes never leaving mine. “So I agreed.”

“I guess you agree to everything they ask you to do.”

He winced, and a part of me regretted it. That was low. Except...was it? What was he, even? My eyes flitted to the door, where a solid salt line lay unbroken.

“So I came back,” he continued. “They told me...they needed an immunity. They’re trying to locate a weapon, but it’s too powerful for them to touch. So they needed to be more powerful and stronger against exorcisms and things like the Colt. We thought they might get it from certain human blood.”

“You were  _ killing people, _ ” I said.

“I had to make it believable, didn’t I?”

I did need to sit down. I slid down onto the floor, my legs no longer willing to hold me up. I leaned back against the wall. He started to stand. “Stay,” I said, and lifted the knife again. “You said certain blood?”

He nodded. Swallowed. “Powerful blood. Not-quite human, I guess.” He tilted his head in my direction. “Psychics. Half-breeds. One or two of those people were werewolves.”

I blinked. “And me?”

“You’re an empath,” he said, sounding puzzled that I’d wondered. “Or were.”

_ And it had stopped, _ I thought,  _ Until the past month when everything went haywire. _

“Did you know?”

“Until I saw you back there?” he shook his head. “No.” His expression was unreadable. Maybe it was guilty. Maybe I was imagining that. “That’s what I can’t get my head around--how you got involved. What’re you doing here anyway? You’re supposed to be in Costa Rica.”

That’s right. I was supposed to be in Costa Rica. And he was supposed to be in Lucifer’s Cage. And everyone, apparently, was misplaced.

“How do you know that?” I growled.

He scratched the back of his neck and studied the floor. “I uh…” he half-chuckled. “I did some digging. Just to be sure you were out.”

“I  _ was  _ out!” I spat. “I was in fucking paradise. And then a month ago I start having dreams of the East coast and Atlantic City and couldn’t stop looking at maps, and the next thing I know I’m dropping everything and boarding a plane to New Jersey.” I paused to catch my breath, panting slightly. “I’m here an hour and two demons snatch me, I wake up strung up in a dungeon and you’re alive and the Demon Boss? What the actual  _ fuck _ , Sam?” I rubbed my head as it began to pound. It was too much. This conversation, this entire scenario. My remaining energy was draining. My eyes closed.

Castiel cleared his throat. “However you managed to end up here, Sam put our operation in jeopardy when he took you from them.”

I opened my eyes. “What operation?”

“When we realized why Sam had been released from Lucifer’s cage, Heaven decided to step in. We knew the Legion was planning something, but needed to know what.” He inclined his head slightly in Sam’s direction. “Sam has been gathering information for us.”

I blinked at Sam. That changed things. “You’re a double agent?”

A ghost of a smile appeared and then vanished from his lips. 

“Unfortunately,” Castiel continued, “his judgment lapsed when he realized they had you.” He looked at Sam. “And now you have to eradicate any suspicion.”

“You hit me,” I remembered.

“I know. I’m sorry,” Sam said. “I needed a way to get you out. I told them we had a history, that I could use you to our advantage, to get you out of there.”

I raised my eyebrows at that. “ _ Use _ me?” 

Sam winced. “I didn’t mean it.”

Castiel stood up and turned to Sam. “You have to mean it,” he said, almost commanded. “You know that. We can’t risk losing their loyalty to you.”

Sam whirled on him. “She isn’t a part of this!” he snapped. “She’s going back to Costa Rica.”

Castiel looked ruffled, his features darkened. “Sam. You cannot take this risk. Whatever your feelings are, you have to put them aside. The mission is too important. If she were to just vanish, they would see through you.”

“If you think--”

“Hey!” I shouted as loudly as I could in my state. “Don’t I get a say in this?”

The both responded in unison: “No.”

They glanced at one another, and I was taken aback. “Look,” I said, using the wall to help me to my feet. “I have no idea what’s going on. I’m still trying to comprehend the fact that you’re alive and that I’m here right now.” I stood and leaned against the wall. “But if you’re going to argue about me, at least give me a say.”

Sam blew out a held breath. “I don’t want you to have be involved again,” he said. “I want you to get on the next plane out. But Cas…”

“You need to be involved,” the angel finished. “Sam has to convince the demons that he really is manipulating you, or else they will know he still has...human tendencies.”

“Manipulating me to do  _ what _ ?” 

Castiel pursed his lips. “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “I need to seek counsel.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Sam said to him, before turning to me. His eyes were soft and pleading. “You can go. He can’t make you stay.”

I couldn’t stand the familiarity, the old warmth that crept back into his voice. I shook my head, trying to clear the fog.  “This is too damn much, Sam.”

Castiel had moved away from the table, toward the window. “We don’t have much time,” he said. “But I will allow you some while I consult with Heaven.” With a rustle of feathers, he was gone.

That left just Sam and me.

For a minute we just stood there, unsure. He moved a few paces to the right, then changed his mind and sat down. He glanced in my direction.

I took a breath and walked over to the table and sat in the chair Castiel had been in. I placed the knife on the table. 

“So,” he said. 

“I take it no one else knows about this.”

He shook his head.

“Not even your brother.”

He glanced away. “No.”

I drummed my fingers on the table and studied the scratched wooden surface. “How long?”

He was silent for several seconds. I ran my thumb along the edge of the table, feeling the grooves where years of use had worn it smooth. He said, “About a year.”

I stopped rubbing the table and looked up at him. He was watching my hands, not meeting my eyes. I couldn’t tell if the knot in my stomach was from anger or sorrow. 

“I guess you couldn’t risk finding us.” I was surprised by how naturally I was absorbing this, how easy it was to understand where he was coming from. Maybe it would’ve been different if Castiel hadn’t just been there; if he trusted Sam, surely that meant Sam was okay.

“Yeah,” he said. “Look--I know you’re exhausted and probably a little freaked out.” I raised my eyebrows in my best “Ya think?” expression and he almost smiled. “But--” He  changed course. “Are you hungry?”

“Starving,” I said, letting it go. Whatever conversation we needed to have to settle or move on could wait. “And where are we? Is this….yours?” There was no way this could be his. Sam wasn’t settled somewhere, right? But looking around there was evidence of him everywhere, from the jacket thrown over the armchair to the boots by the front door to the open laptop on the coffee table.

“Ha, not exactly,” he said. “We’re in Wharton Forest, about forty-five minutes from Atlantic City. My dad and a few other hunters had a network of cabins like this throughout the country.  Safe houses, when they needed to disappear for awhile. This was one of them. Whoever it belonged to is long gone; most of those hunters aren’t around anymore.”

“Lucky for you, I guess.”

It was decidedly strange: we were having a normal conversation. Nevermind that he’d been in Hell for six months and then working with demons for a year while I pined away and tried to find the meaning to it all in Costa Rica; we were talking about a hunting cabin. And despite that giant elephant in the room, it felt good. Weird, but good.

I suddenly realized that Sam probably hadn’t had anyone besides demons and Castiel to talk to for an entire year. No wonder he was slipping back into this old role so easily. And hadn’t I been willing to give anything for this chance, at least up until a few months ago? Was it really that strange?

“Are you okay?”

I shook myself out of my thoughts. “Yeah,” I said. “A little woozy. And this is...it’s just weird, you know?”

He nodded. “Do you feel up for going somewhere? We can pick up your stuff and some food. Or you can stay here.”

Right, my stuff. It was still back at the Superlodge. “Is it safe? I mean, for me to leave?”

He nodded. “They think I’m playing you, remember? Don’t mention Castiel while we’re out and you’ll be fine.”

“Okay,” I said. “Yeah. I think I can handle that.”

Sam drove a black Dodge Charger that looked like nothing I'd ever expect him to drive, and riding with him in something other than the Impala felt all kinds of wrong. We drove away from the cabin, down a gravel drive, and finally along a winding paved road for several miles until we reached an outer road and finally a highway.

He pulled into the Superlodge and I went in, got my one bag from my room and checked out, trying to avoid the skeptical gaze of the clerk as I paid for two nights. That made today November third. I’d lost about a day and a half. Not bad, considering.

Sam raised his eyes when I got back into the car. “That’s all you have?”

I turned around and tossed the bag into the backseat. “I didn’t think I’d need much. I don’t know. Or maybe I thought I’d go back.”

He didn’t say anything as he pulled out of the parking lot, but based on the way he kept his eyes fixed on the road and the set of his shoulders I had a feeling he was biting back more than a few tough questions. After awhile, he asked, “So the empath thing. That’s still...happening?”

“Not really. It basically dried up after...you know. Then last month I started dreaming about coastlines, and obsessing over Atlantic City. And everything was telling me to come here.”

“So you just...dropped everything? Flew here?”

I nodded. He was silent another minute.

“What about now?”

I shrugged. “Nothing. Just normal.”

He pulled into a roadside diner and we went in, took seats in a booth and placed our orders with a plump, bright-faced waitress with a bad perm who smiled pityingly when she brought out my orange juice and a bowl of fruit. “Eat up, dear,” she said to me, topping off Sam’s coffee. “You look like you could use a good meal. The rest’ll be out in a few.”

When she walked away, I leaned across the table. “Do I look that bad?” I whispered.

His eyes scanned my face. “Well,” was all he said.

I sighed. Drank. Ate the banana and grapes. Sam sipped coffee and scanned the paper.

She brought out omelettes and bacon and I practically inhaled mine, craving the nutrients I’d lost on an almost primal level.

He put the paper aside and picked at his food, moving it around on his plate more than actually eating any of it.

“What’s up?” I prodded.

He gave a small head shake. “Nothing. Just thinking.”

I studied him, unsure what to think. I’d gone from fearing he wasn’t all Sam and would turn black eyes on me to eating breakfast with him in the span of a few hours. And nothing about this situation felt entirely right; Winchesters having more lives than the average human or not, surely Sam shouldn’t have been back. Surely I wouldn’t have just  _ happened _ to find him while bound in a demon basement.

I dropped my fork. “Sam,” I said suddenly. “What about the others?”

He looked up, puzzled. “What others?”

“The people I was locked up with. What’s going to happen to them?”

He opened his mouth and just stared at me, silent. 

“You’re kidding,” I said. “You’re just going to leave them there?”

He ducked his head and leaned toward me across the booth. “Look,” he said. “I don’t like it any more than you do. But I can’t do anything about it. I can’t give anything away.”

“Until it comes to pulling me out,” I snapped.

He set his lips. “Do you want to go back?” he challenged.

I gaped at him. There had been a time when Sam was the one championing for the innocent. He’d once begged to save a pair of vampires who’d never tasted human blood. He had insisted on saving the lives of monsters who’d only done what they could to survive and had carried the weight of Madison’s death for months. Sam had always been the one on victim-consoling duty, the one who could convince anyone to open up to him with just a look or a few genuine words.  _ That _ was Sam, and while trading Dean for Ruby in 2008 had put him on path to destruction and made him cold,  _ this _ Sam was different still. Darker.

But what did I expect? He’d spent six months--well, sixty years--locked in Lucifer’s cage. What had happened there? And what had that done to him? If Castiel allowed him to live he couldn’t truly be evil, unless Heaven was so desperate for a spy that they looked past it.  But if Castiel was right, then so was Sam: he  _ couldn’t _ do anything about the other victims. He had to be the perfect Sidney Reilly.

“It’s kind of convenient, right? I get this crazy impulse to show up here and within fifteen minutes your demon thugs have me strung up in a basement that  _ you’re _ in charge of?”

He balked.  “You think I planned this? Are you serious?”

“That’s what it looks like!” I snapped. “For all I know, you planted some weird psychic-impulse in my head to lure me to you.”

He made an incredulous face. “Why would I do that?”

“ _ You _ wouldn’t, Sam. But I have no idea if you  _ are  _ you.”

He fell silent, his mouth partly open as if to protest, but he didn’t say anything.

I blinked hard and studied the pattern in the wallpaper. “God damn it, Sam, this is hard.” From the corner of my eye I saw his shoulders relax slightly. “I watched you die and spent the last year and a half trying to move on from everything that happened, and now you’re right in front of me and I don’t want to feel so conflicted about that.” I rubbed a sleeve across my face. “But what am I supposed to do, you know?”

“That’s why I stayed away,” he consoled. “From you and from Dean.”

_ That _ sounded like the old Sam, and that somehow made me feel worse. 

He took out his wallet and threw a couple of twenties on the table, easily more than enough, and slid out of the booth. “Let’s get out of here.”

I followed him, not really knowing why but also not knowing what else to do. We got back in the car and he sat there awhile, not starting it and just staring through the windshield. 

“I don’t expect you to trust me,” he said at length. “I’m not even sure I trust myself sometimes. ” He twisted his hands over the steering wheel and finally looked at me. “But I have to finish whatever I started, whatever it takes. And you don’t need to be a part of this, no matter what Cas says. I--” He searched for the words. “I want you to have a normal life. I think you need to go back to Costa Rica. It’s not too late. Pick up where you left off. Get out of this.”

I looked out of the window and laughed.

He furrowed his brow. “What?” he asked. “You were happy, right?”

I chuckled and shook my head. “You don’t get it.”

“Then enlighten me!”

“Things were good there. Really good. It’s beautiful, I was working, I had friends, hell, I was starting to have feelings for someone. That probably could have been something, to be completely honest.”

“So what’s stopping you from going back? It’s been what, three days? I’ll drive you to the airport right now.”

“You are!” I snapped. At the bewildered look on his face, I leaned back against the seat and closed my eyes. “I don’t completely trust you, you’re right. But you’re alive, and as much as I’d like to be able to, I can’t go back knowing that you’re here fighting demons and whatever else.”

He let out a long sigh. “I was afraid you’d say that,” he muttered, rubbing his temples. “So what do you wanna do?”

There wasn’t a good or easy answer to that question. A large part of me wanted a do-over where I never got on a plane and left Costa Rica so that I could avoid the past few days entirely and continue living in perfectly ignorant bliss forever. But I also knew that, given the choice between “normal and safe” and “Sam Winchester”, I was going to choose the latter every time.

Isn’t that what I’d done years ago, anyway?

“I want to stay with you,” I said.

Maybe I imagined it, but I almost saw the corners of his lips lift. If they had, the expression was gone in an instant, replaced with a set jaw. He turned at met my gaze. “One condition.”

“Okay….?”

“Dean can’t know.”

“ _ What _ ? Like, ever?”

“I’m serious,” he said, and I could see that he was. “You know how hard this is for you. He’s doing alright with Lisa and Ben. Let him have that.”

“How pissed would he be--”

“He isn’t  _ going _ to find out,” he said firmly. “That’s it.”

Anger flared up again. “Don’t you remember what those four months were like?”

“It’s different!” he snapped. “Dean doesn’t know. It’s not up for negotiation.”

We stared each other, challenging one another. Finally, I looked away. “Okay,” I said. “Fine.”

Satisfied, he nodded and started the car. On the way back to the cabin, we stopped at a Wal-Mart, and while he went to get rock salt, shotgun shells, and groceries,  I grabbed a coat and a few pairs of cheap jeans; New England winters weren’t exactly tropical, and it wasn’t like I’d needed warmer clothes in Costa Rica.

When we got back to the cabin, Castiel was standing near the kitchen table.

“You’re still here,” he noted, seeing me. He sounded pleased beneath his stoicism.

“That didn’t take you long,” Sam retorted with a tinge of distaste, shutting and locking the door behind us.

Castiel ignored Sam. “Y/N,” he said. “Your empathic abilities. Have you been using them?”

He caught me off-guard. “Well, no,” I said. “Until I started feeling the pull to come here, they’ve been gone. They stopped the minute I woke up in that basement.”

He nodded. “I thought so. But it will do.”

He turned to Sam. “You said the demons are no closer to finding the Horn. Is that still correct?”  
  
“Yeah. They’ve been focusing on the blood until we get any leads.”

Castiel ever so slightly inclined his head in my direction. “We’ve found your lead.”

I blinked. Sam and I exchanged a glance.

After a beat, Sam said, “How.”

The angel almost seemed frustrated with our human slowness. “Empaths are naturally drawn to significant phenomena, especially those affecting people they’re close to. With training, Y/N’s abilities could lead us to it.”

“No way,” I scoffed. 

“That doesn’t matter,” Castiel assured. “The demons will accept it. Sam is connected to their mission, and you’re connected to Sam. It’s enough information for them to believe Sam is right to ally himself with you.”

“But it doesn’t really work,” Sam prodded.

Castiel hesitated only briefly. “No.” 

None of us said anything for a minute. Then I asked, “What is this thing, anyway? What do they want?”

“It’s a holy relic,” Castiel explained. “The Horn of Gabriel. It was buried millennia ago, to keep it safe. It can break open any of Hell’s doors and render the gates of Heaven permanently sealed.”

I looked at Sam. “So that would mean--”

He nodded. “Even the cage. We’d be right back where we started.”

Castiel continued: “The demons cannot touch it until they’re stronger, which is why they’re harvesting blood. But they have more progress to make, still.”  
  
“They’re getting there,” Sam said. “They’re holding me off longer. But their trail’s gone cold.” He looked at me and then at Castiel. “What if they want me to bring her in?”

Castiel didn’t seem concerned. “Remember that you are the leader, Sam. You have to gain her trust back, and you have to teach her to focus her abilities. And they will have to wait.”

He nodded, jaw clenched. He looked at me. “Well?”

“As long as I don’t have to go near any demons, I don’t see a problem.”

“Then it is decided,” Castiel said. He adjusted his coat. “Sam, I will be in touch. Until then, continue as normal.” A slight ruffling of feathers, he was gone.

I grabbed one of the bags and started taking things out and spreading them on the table. “I don’t know where you put stuff,” I said. “But just point.”

He came up beside me and grabbed my arm, forcing me to stop. “Hey. Are you sure you’re okay with this?”

I shrugged. “It’s not like I’m really doing anything. Just playing the part, you know?”

“Right,” he said, unconvinced. He moved around me and took the loaf of bread from my hands. “I’ve got this.”

I didn’t protest, just walked to my bag and headed for the shower. I spent a few minutes in front of the mirror, studying the impressive bruising around my left eye. The cut wasn’t bad, but my eyebrow was a few times its normal size and a stunning blue and grey palette had spread around the side of my eye like a nightmarish makeup job. No wonder I’d been getting sideways looks all day: it was a wonder no one had accused Sam of domestic abuse.

Well, that wasn’t really wrong, was it? 

“Domestic” was awkward, too. This whole situation was a hundred shades of uncomfortable. I felt out of place; Winchester wasn’t synonymous with settled. Now here was Sam, apparently settled in a cozy cabin for the past year, with cabinets and a grocery system. And Winchester was rarely singular, and yet here was Sam, and no Dean. Two years ago I would have welcomed the one-on-one time with Sam; now, I dreaded stepping out of the bathroom and having to fill the silence that practically shouted “You were Lucifer’s vessel, you were in Hell for sixty years, you might not be all human.”

Except...that hadn’t stopped me before.

Hadn’t Dean and I worried about his humanity for years before he even started on demon blood? Hadn’t we held as tightly to Sam as we could during all of that, never doubting him even when a host of angels told us to? Even when Sam doubted  _ himself? _ Why was now different?

_ Because it feels different. _

Actually, I couldn’t feel Sam at all anymore. Maybe that was all it was. Maybe it was just the year and a half without him. People change over time. We hadn’t seen each other or spoken in over a year; of course it would feel different. Why couldn’t it be  _ normal people _ different?

Or maybe I couldn’t feel him because he wasn’t Sam.

I shut off the water and pressed my face into a towel. I wanted nothing more in that moment than to pick up the phone and call the other Winchester brother, just for some affirmation that this was okay.

When I came out, Sam was putting on his coat. “I have to go,” he said. “I should be back tonight.”

I shrugged. “Okay.” He didn’t need to tell me where he was going.

He crossed the room and opened closet I was standing next to. Other than a few hanging jackets and some blankets on the shelves, it was empty. “Here. Look.” He placed his hand on the wall just inside the door and fumbled with a small latch, then pulled a wooden panel from inside the wall. It was about six-inches thick and as wide as the closet when completely opened. Attached to the panel was an arsenal: blades of various lengths and metal, wooden stakes, shotguns, handguns, boxes of ammo, a small crossbow, and an assortment of amulets, flasks of holy water, and other supernatural-repelling materials.

“Oh!” I marveled. “Wow. Thanks.” 

“So, you’ll be fine,” he said. “There’s more salt under the sink, too. Help yourself to whatever.” 

“Be careful,” I said.

He nodded and hesitated, looking like he might say something more, but then just reached out and gave my shoulder a firm grip before turning and heading out the door. I followed behind and turned the deadbolt.

I let out a breath I hadn’t been aware of holding. It was hard to be around him; there was so much that went unspoken, too many half-asked and unanswered questions. To say I was afraid of him was mostly a formality, a gesture as routine as a handshake or small talk. A bigger part of me wanted to forget caution and accept him as he was. After all we’d been through--never mind the last year and a half--I wanted more than a clasp on the shoulder, as absolutely unreasonable it was to think we could pick off where we left off.

I wasn’t sure what to do with myself now. It was pushing two in the afternoon and I didn’t have a way to go anywhere, even if I felt it was safe to do so. But I did have my laptop, and I doubted it’d be difficult to crack the wifi code. Glancing around the room, I saw a couple of old DVDs next to the TV, and a rickety bookshelf was crammed into a corner. 

I kept myself occupied watching old Spaghetti Westerns and mucking around on the internet for the rest of the day and made myself a sandwich for dinner. When Sam hadn’t returned by nine, I grabbed a blanket and gun from the closet, triple-checked the locks and salt lines and curled up on the couch with the gun beneath the pillow. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the kudos! It's a little nerve-racking putting this baby out there, so even a little love goes a long way!

Sam drove Southwest along route 206, taking the backroads he’d driven so many times the past year he could do it with his eyes closed, and tried to clear his head.

_ How had I been so sloppy? _

He didn’t know, truly, how Y/N had found him, and while he believed that she didn’t know, either, he wasn’t naive enough to think that it was a coincidence that she’d shown up and been captured by his footsoldiers. But what he _really_ couldn’t figure out, the small detail he couldn’t _quite_ place, was who had put her there, and why.

She didn’t fit with his plans, and it scared him. He couldn’t afford to lose focus, not now.

The trees opened and he stopped before a large metal gate where he waited until it was opened by one of the guards. He drove through and it clanged shut behind him. The quarry spread out around him, all sharp, clean cliffs and mountains of gravel. One multi-story, boxlike storage warehouse stood to the left of a water deposit, and it was near this that Sam parked. He got out and, nodding to the two demons stationed at the door, let himself inside. 

It was a large, open, dim room. Fluorescent light bulbs buzzed overhead, casting sickly light against the concrete walls and floor. A few mismatched pieces of furniture stood around the room in no particular arrangement. Maps covered the far right wall, and just below them a demon was leaning over the table, scribbling in a notebook. Sam walked over.

“Garrett.”

The demon glanced up. “Sam.” He smirked. “You’re back sooner than we thought.”

Sam bristled. “I’m sorry, I forgot you had a say in that.”

Garrett flinched, averting his eyes.  _ Good, _ Sam thought.

The demon cleared his throat. “We brought two more in last night. Shapeshifter and another werewolf.”

Sam nodded. “Bloodwork?”

“Running it now. Emmett wanted to try to combine it with the solution we got two weeks ago. That bloodsucker bitch from Detroit.”

“Do you have anything useful to tell me, or are you just going to give me a grocery list?”

Garrett curled his lip and his eyes flashed black. “Sorry,  _ boss,” _ he sneered, “but your little hero mission yesterday threw us off track.”

Sam snapped his arm out and grabbed Garrett by the front of his shirt. “Careful,” he warned, his face inches from Garrett’s. “I snap my fingers and you’re back in the Pit.”

The demon raised his hands in submission, and Sam shoved him away. “Where’s Judith?”

The basement door slammed shut. “You called?” Sam turned. Judith strode toward him, heeled boots clipping on the concrete. Her host’s raven hair stood out on the paleness of her skin. 

She sidled up to him. “Glad to see you’re back, Sam. We were getting worried when you ran off.” She touched his arm at the elbow, looking up at him through thick lashes. “Who’s the whore you’re protecting, anyway?”

Sam flashed a calculated smirk and reached around to squeeze the meat of her ass. “You jealous?”

She grinned and danced coyly away, perching on the edge of the table. 

Sam stood in front of the two demons. “I don’t owe you any explanation,” he said. “But you’ll want to hear this and relay it to the rest of them.”

“You said we could use her,” Judith replied. Garrett nodded.

“We can. She’s an empath. Which means she’s attuned to any supernatural phenomena, anything big.” He paced the length of the table. He had to tread carefully here; too much coolness and he wouldn’t sell it, too much emotion and he’d betray the lie. “With the right training, she could be a homing beacon right to the Horn. Exactly what we need.”

Both of their eyes glistened. 

Garrett hissed an excited breath through his teeth. “Then why isn’t she still  _ here _ , where we can use her, study her, tone her? We have all the facilities--”

Sam raised a hand to silence him. “She’d break. You can’t force empaths; they’re too sensitive. If we’re going to use her, she needs to feel she’s safe.”

Judith raised her eyebrows and crossed her arms, wearing a knowing smirk on her lips. She nudged Garrett with her elbow. “Ah. They have a history. He’s gotta string her along.” She hopped off the table. “You know, Sam, if you’d wanted something to sink your meat into, you could’ve just asked and saved yourself the trouble.”

He quieted the anger that leapt in his chest and forced a flawless sneer instead. “Watch it,” he reminded her calmly. “She has her uses; she’ll get us what we need. In the meantime, run her blood. See if you can manipulate the empath cells. Am I clear?”

They both nodded.

“Good. I need to talk to our psychic.”

The second floor of the building was divided in half; the eastern side of the room was walled off with brick and plexiglass. Beyond this wall was a medical laboratory, where a dozen demons worked on examining and manipulating blood samples from the captives in the basement before preparing transfusions for the legion. 

The other half of the room held several large cages that were just big enough for a person to stand and walk four or five paces around each wall. Most of the cages stood empty, but the one against the far wall was occupied by a gangly, bespeckled elderly man with white hair. He had a cot in his cage, a chamber pot, and a pile of reading materials, one of which lay open in his lap as he sat cross-legged on the cot.

Sam walked over and the man blinked up at him, completely relaxed. “What do you want?” he sneered. “I already found you a psychic today; one of your goons is after him now.”

Sam glowered at him. “I want you to tell me about the empath you dragged here.”

The psychic raised his eyebrows. “Empath?”

“Don’t play stupid.” He gripped the bars of the cage and leaned forward. “Two days ago, we brought in a psychic, an empath. Says she felt some psychic pull to go to Atlantic City. A few hours after landing, we picked her up.”

The psychic’s brow knotted in puzzlement. “I saw her arrive. I alerted the guards, as told to. But...a pull? That wasn’t me.”

“You’re lying,” Sam said, pacing around the corner so he was closer to the cot. 

The psychic shook his head. “I’m not,” he said. “I swear. You can kill me if you don’t believe me.” He didn’t look concerned about that prospect.

Sam almost growled. “Then what brought her here?”

He shrugged, uninterested. “Oh, could be anything. Empaths have connections to all sorts of things. Maybe she sensed what we’re doing here. Maybe she felt someone she had a connection to. Who knows?” He shrugged again and flipped a page in his magazine.

Sam stared him down, one hand gripping a bar of the cage, then pushed off it and stormed in the other direction.

“Sam?” He paused and turned. Jordon, one of the lab demons, had left the lab and was at his elbow. “We just finished Erich’s third dose of the most recent batch. You’d said to let you know when we were done.”

_ Finally, something was going right. _ Sam grinned. “Send him to meet me in the yard.”

Behind the warehouse was what passed for the yard--a large slab of rock as smooth as concrete surrounded by a high chain-link fence. It was about the size of a tennis court, really, but instead of a net stretched across the middle, a Devil’s Trap had been chalked in the center. A plastic trunk, like those used for gardening supplies, stood against one wall. Sam went over to it and pulled out a bag of rock salt, a shotgun, and a flask of holy water. 

“Jordon said you’d asked for me.”

Sam turned as Erich strode into the yard. He was a younger demon, fairly fresh off the rack and out of the Pit, and he wore a fittingly young meatsuit. The boy was maybe a college sophomore, freckled and sandy-haired. 

Sam nodded toward the Trap. “Get in,” he said. 

Erich obediently crossed the yard and stepped inside the Devil’s Trap, facing Sam with his arms hanging loosely at his sides.

“Now get out.”

Erich took a step forward. When his foot reached the chalk he was pushed backwards.

“No luck,” he said.

Sam picked up the holy water and strode toward the demon. “How’re you feeling after that last transfusion?”

Erich shrugged. “Not much different,” he said. “A little stronger, maybe.”

“Hmm,” Sam mused, and then lashed out his hand, splashing holy water across the demon’s face. 

Erich hissed and sputtered, rivulets of smoke and water running off of him, but he shook himself and recovered quickly. He glowered at Sam. 

“Not as bad as last time,” Sam noted. He walked back to the trunk, set down the flask, and grabbed the shotgun. He loaded it with salt rounds, cocked it, spun, and fired.

The shot hit Erich in the stomach and he doubled over and stumbled backward. When he looked up, his eyes were black. He threw himself toward Sam, but the trap held him back. 

“You bastard,” he growled. 

“Watch your mouth,” Sam corrected. “ _ "Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio infernalis adversarii, omnis legio, omnis congregatio et secta diabolica…” _

The demon wailed, fell down writhing on the ground.

“FIGHT it!” Sam snapped. “ _...Ergo, omnis diabolica, adjuramus te…Cessa decipere humanas creaturas, eisque æternæ perditionìs venenum propinare...” _ At first, the demon’s fit continued, his head jerking back and forth violently, body seizing. But then it began to lessen. The demon began to take control. Its shouts subsided and it stood, still wracked by violent tremors but maintaining composure as it stared at Sam. Sam’s eyes widened; he hadn’t realized they’d progressed so far, and he felt a strange mix of excitement and disgust.

He pressed on with the Latin. “ _ Vade, satana, inventor et magister omnis fallaciæ, hostis humanæ salutis…Humiliare sub potenti manu Dei; contremisce et effuge, invocato a nobis sancto et terribili nomine...quem inferi tremunt...Ab insidiis diaboli, libera nos, Domine.” _

The demon moved as if it’d been kicked in the liver. Black smoke began coughing out of its mouth only to be sucked back in and then coughed out, over and over again. The demon’s eyes widened in panic as its grip on its host slipped.

Sam dropped the Latin. Erich slipped to his knees, panting.

“You’re doing better,” Sam observed. “Not as good as I’d like, but...better.”

Erich glared up at him and spat. “Fuck you.”

Sam raised his eyebrows. “I thought I told you to watch your mouth.” He raised his right hand and twisted it into a fist.

Erich’s eyes flashed and widened as he felt Sam’s grip tighten around him. He choked, making small gurgling noises in his throat, and his knees buckled.

Sam twisted further. “Fight it, Erich,” he commanded. 

Black smoke was wafting up the host’s throat and spilling out in little puffs. Erich’s eyes rolled back into his head and he fell to his side. Sam let up slightly, and the demon withdrew into the host. After a few seconds, Sam pushed again, and this time Erich held him off several minutes before he was coughing out again. Sam let go and dropped his hand.

Sam crossed his arms and nodded in satisfaction as Erich sat panting, glowering, his eyes still black as ink. “Good,” he said. “That’s all for today. Tell Jordon what happened.” He walked forward and used the toe of his boot and wipe away part of the Trap. 

He turned and headed out of the yard, making his way back around the front of the building toward his car. He wasn’t happy with what he’d seen; the demons were still far from invulnerable, but they were getting stronger at an almost exponential rate. The Devil’s Trap was still holding them, but exorcisms weren’t as flawless as before. He felt sick; he was, essentially, aiding an army of demons in becoming unkillable. He wished he had the Colt, or at least Ruby’s old knife, to put to the test and reassure him.

Absorbed in his thoughts, he didn’t hear the footsteps rushing behind him until the demon was upon him. Erich leapt at Sam’s back, wielding a knife, and Sam turned just enough that it came down on his shoulder blade and not his spine. 

With a shout, Sam whirled and struck the demon on the side of the head, sending him sprawling on the gravel. He lunged, grabbed Erich by the collar and lifted him to his feet, slamming him against the side of the building. His eyes were wide with fear. “Guess I should’ve let you cool down before I let you out,” Sam growled. “Oh well.” He lifted his palm to Erich’s forehead.

The demon vainly tried to shrink away. “No, no, no please, ple--”

Sam pressed his palm to the demon’s temple. The host flashed below the skin, orange light flickering like electricity as the demon died. The host went limp and Sam let go. It slipped to the ground. 

Chest heaving, Sam reached behind him and felt along the wound. It was already sticky with blood, and he thought he’d need to stitch it. He gave Erich’s host a shove with his boot, and when it didn’t move, he cursed and walked around to the front of the building. One of the guards looked up as he approached.

“Clean up the mess around back,” Sam ordered. “And tell Jordon her most recent dose on Erich was stronger than the last.” He paused, and turned back. “And if you somehow fuck that up, I will kill you, too.”

The demon’s eyes widened and he nodded and hurried off behind the building. 

Sam pulled his keys from his pocket and got into the car, careful not to lean against and bleed all over the seat, and drove back to the cabin.

* * *

 

The sound of the deadbolt sliding back and the door swinging open woke me up, and my hand slid under the pillow and tightened around the gun before I remembered where I was and registered Sam’s outline plodding across the floor. I closed my eyes and laid still, hoping to slip back into sleep.

The back of my eyelids glowed red as he flipped on the kitchen light. I heard him rifling through a cabinet and then the fridge opening and what sounded like glass being set on the table. He turned on the water for a few minutes, then off, and then he walked past me across the room.

There was some rustling, and then he hissed in a breath. “Shit.”

I opened my eyes. He was standing beyond the foot of the couch, just inside the bathroom door. He’d taken off his shirt and was still holding it one hand, and had twisted so his back was mostly to the mirror, craning his neck over his shoulder to look at the long, crimson gash just below his shoulder blade.

I sat up, alarmed. “What happened?”

He startled slightly, then noticed me on the couch and relaxed. “Nothing too serious.” He walked out of the bathroom and back to the kitchen table. There was a bottle of whiskey and a bag of medical supplies on top of it. Sam grabbed the bottle and a needle and some thread and turned toward the bathroom, but then stopped and set it back down. He looked at me.

“Would you mind?”

It took me a second to realize what he was asking. I shook my head and got up. “It’s been awhile,” I admitted.

“It’s like riding a bike,” he said. “And you’ll do better than I will from this angle.”

He turned the chair around and sat in it backwards, leaning on his forearms on the table. He took a swig of whiskey and then passed me the bottle.

“I’ll never understand how you always remember the booze, but never think to pick up rubbing alcohol or peroxide,” I muttered, pouring some of the amber liquid over the cut. It was probably four inches long by about one wide, and judging by the red stain on Sam’s shirt on the floor, had gone deep enough to cause some good bleeding. 

My hands shook as I threaded the needle. It had been so long since I’d had to do this, and it had never been something I’d felt entirely comfortable with in the first place. “You have a lighter?” 

He reached into the bag and pulled out a green Bic and passed it to me. I held the needle in the flame several seconds and then put it out and pressed the needle into Sam’s skin.

He tensed under my fingers and I swallowed, trying to keep my mind focused on the task itself and not the wound or the discomfort it was causing both of us.

After a few painstakingly slow stitches, I had a rhythm going and could breathe a little more easily. “So, what happened?”

He took another swig and cleared his throat. “One of the demons got a little over-excited and came at me with a knife when I was leaving.”

I pulled another stitch through, drawing the skin together tightly. “I thought they were supposed to be following you. Was it mutiny?”

“Not exactly,” he said, letting the breath hiss through his teeth as I pierced the needle through again. “I’ve been putting them through some pretty intense training, trying to see how effective the blood tests have been. Most of them tire out by the end, but every once in awhile a demon will get aggravated and take a swing at me.”

“This is a little more than a swing.”

He chuckled softly. “Well. He was younger. They’re a little more volatile. More primal, I guess.”

I frowned. “What’d you do to him?”

“Killed him,” he said, like he was talking about a cockroach. He didn’t need to tell me how, exactly, he’d killed a demon. Dean had the Colt, and Ruby’s knife was tucked securely into a pocket in my bag.

  
I pulled the last stitch and tied it off, then cut off the excess. 

“Okay,” I said. “Done.” But my hands lingered longer than necessary. I realized, with surprise, that this was the first time I’d really been close to him. I found myself just wanting to feel him; even if I couldn't read his emotions anymore, I craved a physical connection.  Lightly, I stroked my fingers across his shoulders.

He tensed, and I stopped, but then he rolled his shoulders back into my hands and I squeezed, massaging the knots at the base of his neck. He sighed. I wanted to lean over him and wrap my arms across his torso and bury my face in his neck, breathe him in like before.

I missed him.

He shifted and stood and my hands fell to my sides. He turned and faced me. “Thanks.”

“Anytime,” I said, meeting his eyes, hoping he knew I meant it.  
  
I watched his Adam’s apple shift as he swallowed. My breath caught.

Everything after that was like the slow-motion crashing of a waterfall. One moment he stood in front of me, the next his hand slid to the back of my head, tangled in my hair, and his lips were devouring mine as if they were the last of the fruit in Eden. 

My response was almost Pavlovian, hands clutching the nape of his neck, pulling him closer, desperate for him, filled with so much empty longing and hurt and need. He pushed, walking me backwards, hands roaming everywhere, until my ass hit the door to the bedroom and he broke away. 

His eyes searched mine. “Yeah?” he panted.

“Yeah,” I breathed.

Then we were on the bed, my breasts exposed to that hungering mouth, hands tangled in his hair, roaming his back, feeling his shoulders rise and fall with each puff of hot breath against my skin-- _ breathing, alive,  _ **_here_ ** **.** Then he was gone, fumbling in his wallet, the condom going on and  _ don’t think about why he has them, don’t think about someone else, just him, only him  _ and he pushed in with a grunt that I met with a keening sigh at the relief of feeling him so close and so warm and so  _ here _ .

He paused, staring down at me, all that size and muscle stretched taut, an expression of perplexed wonder on his face. “Have you--?”

I swallowed, shook my head, didn’t let myself think about how he might answer. “Just you.” And I wondered if he knew, if he got it, how I couldn’t pretend, couldn’t move on, couldn’t  _ breathe _ the whole past year.

He let out a sound that was almost a growl, rolled his hips, and groaned “I missed this,” at the same time I breathed “I missed you.”

He was still a hurricane, but more a distant, cold storm. He remembered where to touch, and how, but moved more like a mechanic over an engine than a musician across an instrument. It was heavy, quiet, quick, and then I was fluttering and clinging to him and he was emptying, one hand clutching my hip, and he must’ve tasted the salt trickling down my face when he kissed my jaw before rising from the bed. I swallowed  _ I love you _ before it could leave my lips and didn’t breathe until he leaned over me and caught my mouth in a searing kiss.

I reached for him but he straightened. “I’m going to get some work done. Don’t wait up.”

I didn’t let myself tremble until the door closed, and then I pulled my clothes back on and cocooned myself tightly in the blankets, wondering  how I could be pining for him more now than when I'd thought he was dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, yeah. In reality, genetics and bloodwork are super complicated. How realistic is this demon bloodwork analysis? Probably not very. But hey. It's Supernatural.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay! I have several more chapters written that I need to polish, so the next few will come quickly!

Sam was gone the next morning.

I hadn’t expected him to be in the bedroom, but when I traipsed into the kitchen for some breakfast, he wasn’t there, either.

I made a pot of coffee and sipped on it at the kitchen table and tried to think.

Something was different about Sam. Actually, a  _ lot _ of things were different about Sam. He was back from the dead and hadn’t attempted to contact anyone from his previous life. He was acting as King of the Demons which was uncomfortably close to Azazel’s plans for him. He was aloof and uncaring.

Castiel had seemed untroubled by it, but then again, he wasn’t human. He didn’t pick up on the subtleties of human emotion and interaction.

I thought again about calling Dean, yet somehow doubted he’d see anything past  _ Sam is alive _ .

I finished my coffee and showered, and by the time I was dressed I’d convinced myself that it was probably nothing more than my own melodrama. Maybe it was wrong to think he’d be the same and want the same things as before. At the same time, I couldn’t stop thinking about how  _ cold  _ he was. There was no love there, no affection, anything. But maybe I was just so used to feeling him on an empathic level, truly  _ feeling  _ his emotions, that I was out of touch with reading him the way any normal human would.

Even still, I didn’t want to face him.

Luckily, I was mostly spared. Sam was rarely at the cabin, and when he was, he carried on as if nothing had happened between us, so I followed suit. After that night though, I slept on the couch.

So we passed the next days in a quiet, strained routine that was so opposite what I typically associated with the hunting life it almost felt deadly. We tiptoed around one another like we were afraid to shatter a bubble, and we didn’t get much past small talk. What was there to talk about? Nothing either of us wanted to address.

Sam would leave at different times, sometimes in the morning, sometimes after dark, to go do whatever it was, exactly, that he did with his charges, and I was mostly left to my own devices. In an attempt to salvage whatever scraps of our situation I could, I mentioned wanting to contribute, so he’d given me the task of researching everything I could about Gabriel’s Horn. There wasn’t much, but it kept me occupied. It kept my mind off of whatever was going on with us. With him. 

Then, about a week after that night, I woke up to Sam seated at the kitchen table, staring intently at his laptop.

I grabbed a cup of coffee and a bagel and sat down across from him. A newspaper was open on the table. I pushed it out of the way and grabbed one of the lore books I’d been working on last night. It was easier not to talk. It was easier just to work.

“Oh,” he said, as if he’d just noticed me. “Read that article on the left. I think I found a job.”

I raised my eyebrows. “A  _ job _ ? You mean, other than the one we’re working now?”

He waved a hand at me. “That’s not a job.” He slid the paper back to me and tapped an article on the top of the page. “Look.” 

I pulled it toward me and read:

 

**Third Child Missing in Pine Barrens.**

    Following a string of cattle mutilations, yet another child has gone missing near the Pine Barrens in Woodbine. Sarah Cooper, 5, is the third child to disappear, following Andy Young (6) and Damian Perkins (6) whose skeletons and belongings were both found last week.

    Megan Cooper, Sarah’s mother, said her daughter was playing in the yard when she vanished into the woods. 

    “I was inside doing dishes after dinner, watching her from the window. I walked away for one minute and when I came back, she was gone.”

    Cooper said she and her husband searched the woods before calling the police.

    At this time, authorities are investigating all possibilities. Search parties have been organized daily, to no results.

    Anyone with information should call 555-1234.

 

I looked up, intrigued. “What is it?”

He spun his laptop around. It was a website on New England urban legends. The open page was titled “The Jersey Devil.” Below a picture of a goat-like beast with wings and a devil’s tail was a paragraph describing a mother’s cursed birth and the beast’s appetite for young flesh.

“I think I saw a movie about this thing once,” I said, passing the laptop back to Sam.

“There’s a good chance,” he said, focusing back on the computer screen. “But anyway, I think this is our monster.”

I just stared at him.

“What?” He asked.

I shook my head. “I dunno...don’t you have enough to deal with? Wouldn’t you appreciate the down time?”

He looked surprised at my surprise. “It passes the time. Keeps me sharp.”

“I guess I figured working with demons would keep you pretty busy.”

He shrugged. “I delegate.” 

I was quick to change the subject. “So, uh, where is it and how do we kill it?”

“About an hour south of here, give or take. Fire should do it.” He shut the laptop and stood up, stretching. “You up for some camping?”

I wasn’t. The idea of a camping trip with Sam made me itch. This conversation was already more than we’d spoken to each other in the past week. He made me uncomfortable, though he seemed unfazed and simply uninterested.

I sighed. “It’s been awhile since I’ve hunted. I’m pretty rusty.”

He was already up and moving around the kitchen, throwing various supplies into a bag. “You’d be surprised how easy it comes back. I was out four years and picked it back up, you know that.”

I narrowed my eyes at him; he’d gone from wanting nothing to do with me, to sleeping with me, to ignoring me. Now he was suddenly  blasé about the entire situation?

As if he’d read my mind, he said, “Honestly, Y/N? It’d be nice to have backup. And this isn’t demons.” He paused. “And it might take a couple of days, and I think you’d be safer with me than alone here.”

The idea of leaving the cabin on a hunt sent a spark of excitement through my gut. I’d been going a little stir-crazy and truthfully, a simple hunt sounded even a little fun, even with weird not-Sam. I could handle myself, and he seemed to have lost any interest in being physical. “Yeah. Let’s do it.”

The cabin had come fully-stocked with the typical hunter’s supply kit, from the arsenal hidden in the hall closet to a pantry bursting with canned goods and MRE’s. In a back closet, too, Sam had found camping gear, including an intact 4-person tent and a pile of sleeping bags.

We were packed within an hour. When Sam went out to throw the last load into the trunk, I pulled Ruby’s knife from my bag and strapped it into a sheath on my ankle and covered it with my jeans. Couldn’t be too careful. 

We drove south about an hour; Sam said he’d pinpointed the location based on where the children had disappeared. He’d taken out a map and marked each of their last seen locations, and they more or less formed a rough triangle. We were headed to the center.

We parked the car near a hiking trail entrance and lugged our gear into the woods. Sam had a GPS and a map, and I let him lead the way. After awhile, we left the official hiking trails behind and trekked into woods, finding our way along deer paths. We’d hiked several miles into the Pine Barrens when he finally stopped in a somewhat clear area maybe 100 yards from a decent sized lake, looked around, and nodded.

“We’ll camp here,” he said, dropping his rucksack and beginning to clear an area for the tent. 

“Are we just expecting this thing to show up or…?”

Sam was pulling out tent poles from the bag. “All the lore says it’s pretty territorial,” Sam said, “So I’m hoping that works. If not, we’ll track it. It has to have some kind of den, and it can’t be far.”

We worked about an hour setting up the tent, rolling out the sleeping bags, getting a campfire going and double and triple checking the weapons, including the home-made flamethrowers we’d brought. By the time we were finished the sun was setting, and we each grabbed a spot near the fire, spearing hotdogs on to sticks for dinner.

We were quiet, each listening to the forest settling in for the night, straining for anything out of the ordinary. But it was all soft rustles and wind.

I expected tonight to follow any other evening (or morning, or afternoon) with Sam: in uncomfortable silence. But to my surprise, he cleared his throat and said, “So, uh, did you do any hunting in Costa Rica?” 

I turned my hotdog over, watching to make sure it didn’t slide off and into the fire. “Only twice,” I said. 

He raised his eyebrows . “Alright,” he said with a slight grin. “I’m listening.”

I smiled. I couldn’t help it. The hunting life--especially that of the Winchesters--didn’t have many upsides. But there was a familiarity, a kinship, in sharing the good stories: the salt-and-burns, the ones that didn’t keep you up at night. 

“I never went looking for hunts,” I explained. “I was done with that. But you know how it is. They always find you.”

He nodded, a little solemnly I thought.

“Anyway, so I moved in with this older woman named Vera when I got there. After only a few days, weird things started happening. My bedroom light would shut off randomly. My stuff would be moved. Sometimes things would be thrown across the living room at me.”

“Poltergeist?” Sam guessed.

I nodded. “Apparently Vera knew about it, too. I walked into the kitchen one morning and half of a pineapple came flying at my head and Vera just said, ‘I don’t think the spirit likes you.’ Just like that. Like it was no big deal.”

Sam stifled a laugh. “You’re kidding!”

“No!” I said, chuckling myself. “I shit you not. I guess there’d been one hanging out in the house as long as she’d been there, and it didn’t like new people.”

“So what? Salt & Burn?”

I shook my head. “I found a psychic. She cleaned it out. So that wasn’t so much of a hunt as it was a minor annoyance.”

“Do you ever think about how weird our definition of ‘minor annoyance’ is?”

“Yes,” I said. “All the time.”

I pulled the hotdog off the stick and took a bite, leaning back on my elbows. The fire was blazing, and I was sweating a little despite the chilly air. 

“So what was the second one?” He had shifted so he was lying on his side, propped up on his forearm. He was looking at me eagerly, a small grin pulling at the corners of his mouth, the fire dancing in his eyes making him appear young and excitable.

“Demons,” I sighed, chuckling a little. “Isn’t it always demons?”

He didn’t respond but briefly glanced away.

“Anyway,” I continued. “I don’t know really what they were doing. It didn’t seem like anything too sinister.” When he raised his eyebrows I had to correct myself. “I mean, they were more like shit disturbers than, I don’t know, plotting anything significant. You know?”

“Yeah, okay.”

“Well, a group of us were on a safari in  Jacó when one of the guides warned us about going to some of the discotecas on the beachfront. He said people’d been getting rowdy and a little violent lately. So naturally we didn’t listen to him and went to this club anyway. Ten minutes of being there and I was smelling sulfur. There was a group of maybe five of them that had just kind of taken over the place, trying to get deals.”

His eyes widened. “You took on five demons yourself?”

“Ha!” I barked. “No way. I left the group to check it out and ran into a local hunter, actually. He’d already had a good start and had traps set up, but was glad to have backup.”

“So you both just trapped them and sent them back?”

I was suddenly keenly aware of the knife strapped to my leg, and tried not to touch it or even look at it. “Yeah,” I said. “Exorcisms all night, basically.”

“And that was it, after that?”

“Yeah. Costa Rica’s pretty quiet. And like I said, I wasn’t looking. I was avoiding.”

“I don’t blame you,” he said. He picked up a stick and started digging in the embers, turning them over so they glowed bright orange around the charred wood. “Can I ask you something?”

My heart pounded. He was going to bring up the other night. Ask me what my problem was. Challenge my attachment. Solidify my belief that I was overreacting, reading too into it. I swallowed. “Sure.”

“Did you and Dean keep in touch?”

I exhaled. So that was it. I’d wondered if he’d bring Dean up. We hadn’t so much as mentioned his name since he’d made me swear not to involve him in this. It had bothered me then, and I’d been grappling with whether to break that promise or not because  _ surely _ something wasn’t right. But maybe it was. Maybe he did care about Dean, and his pride was just too big.

“Yeah, a little. Pretty sporadically, but yeah.”

He didn’t take his attention from the embers, but remained silent, waiting for me to give more.

I sat up, pulling my knees to my chest and resting my chin on them, watching Sam idly dig in the ashes. “We stayed together a couple of months after...well, after you were gone. Basically drove from town to town awhile, not really doing anything, just trying to keep moving, find things to do.” I didn’t tell him that Dean had been tearing apart the country for anything that could get Sam back, or that we were both spending too much time behind a bottle of whiskey and not enough sleeping or grieving in any functional way, or about the seemingly constant fighting, that we’d almost come to blows more than a few times. 

“Eventually we realized we weren’t going anywhere. I was gone by August. Dean drove me to the airport and headed off to Lisa’s.” 

We’d gotten sloppy on a summoning ritual trying to find answers, a solution, a miracle,  _ anything _ , and almost gotten ourselves killed. Maybe that’s what Dean had been hoping for, but the narrow escape and our borderline violent fight that followed finally woke us up. We couldn’t suffer together; we’d tear each other apart. 

“We sent a few e-mails, just touching base, checking in, but it never really went beyond small talk. Usually it was just, ‘Hey, still alive. Doing okay. Be careful.’ I haven’t heard from him since a few weeks before I left Costa Rica. I didn’t even tell him about the psychic stuff.”

Sam nodded. He had set the stick down and was just staring at the flames. “I’d wondered. I saw him in Cicero, when I got back, but I didn’t know how long he’d been there.”

I gawked. “You  _ saw _ him?”

He looked at me, finally. “Yeah. Just to see if he’d followed through.”

Something roiled in my stomach. “And you didn’t say anything? Talk to him? Nothing?”

He shrugged. “It didn’t seem important.”

My hands were beginning to shake. I clutched my jacket sleeves.“You weren’t here,” I said, trying to sound comforting and instead sounding stern. “You don’t know what it was like. He needs to know, Sam, he-”

“Don’t.” He was staring me down now, commanding. 

I wanted to push him. All of the tension and distrust and frustration of being in such close proximity to him and yet unable to connect with him, the confusion and hurt of that first night and the days of no explanation were coming to a head and I  _ wanted _ a fight. I was hot. Never mind that I could swing at him and he’d have me on the ground before I could make contact--I wanted to throttle him. 

But I knew if I pushed him, he’d push back, and I’d lose him. 

I let it go. I let out a long, slow breath and stood up, walking away from the fire toward the tent, hands shaking.

“Wait,” he said. I heard him get up behind me. I kept going. 

I froze. 

It was in front of me, slightly behind the tent. Every hair on my body was erect, every nerve buzzing.

“Y/N--” Sam had stopped short, too.

It was roughly the size of a Great Dane and standing on its hind legs, with a long, goat-like face and horns and two massive, bat-like wings. Its skin was black, hairless, and charred. A pointed tail flicked idly behind its back. As it turned red, shimmering eyes on me I wondered how we could have missed it creeping up on us and fear, ice cold, slipped into my bloodstream and rendered me paralyzed.

It snorted, horse-like, and charged forward.

“MOVE!”

Without thinking I threw myself to the right, hitting the ground and rolling. I heard a gunshot and leapt back to my feet. Sam had fired from the hip, clipping its leg and throwing it off balance, but it had knocked him back with one strike from its wing and he went sprawling. The devil circled past him back into the trees, and while I cast around for a weapon it shook itself and turned, braying wildly, and lurched back toward me.

The fire and the rest of the weapons were between us; I took a gamble and lunged forward. My hands gripped the barrel of the sawed-off, the closest thing I could grab, and I raised it and shot blindly through the flames.

The devil lifted into the air just as I pulled the trigger. He went over the flames and the shot and was upon me. Hot, razor claws dug into my shoulders and I was yanked backward and up as the beast, screeching and braying and snapping, labored to lift me into the air. But he wasn’t built for the weight of an adult, and my feet scraped the ground as he dragged me backward into the trees. I clutched the shotgun for dear life, trying to maneuver it in a way I could use it over my shoulder, but the jerking movement and claws dug into my skin made it hard to move at all.

“Sam!” I shouted, but he was already moving, rushing toward the fire and grabbing the flamethrowers.  The devil was picking up speed if not height, and trees darted by on either side of me. “SAM!”

He ran after us. Out of range for the flamethrower, he fired two shots and the devil jerked to the side with a screech, one of his claws ripping out of my skin like a fish hook and for a moment I was only aware of pain, white-hot and blinding. But with the claw out, the pressure had lessened, and I was able to turn the shotgun so it was facing over my shoulder toward the devil.

Then the trees thinned, and my feet were dipping into water as it pulled me over the lake. Sam had reached the edge; he was right behind us. It was now or never. Resting the gun on my left shoulder and pressing the barrel against the devil’s leg, I tilted my head as far to the right as I could and squeezed.

All of the noise was sucked of the world. The claw tore from my shoulder and I plunged into the icy, black water.

I let myself sink to the bottom; it was only seven or eight feet at most where I was, and I didn’t want the beast to turn around and pull me out. I stayed there as long as I could, and when my lungs started burning, I pushed off the bottom and shot to the surface.

I sucked in a breath and spun around. A burst of light exploded from the shore. Sam was battling the beast, holding it off with the flamethrower. Faintly, as if my ears were stuffed with cotton and wrapped in a few layers of pillows, I could hear the monster roaring and screeching as it writhed and bubbled in the flames. The ripe scent of burning flesh reached me across the water.

I wasn’t far from the shore, and slowly began paddling toward it, using my legs more than my arms as every movement set shocks of pain from my shoulders. As soon as my feet touched bottom I stood and walked, moving in the awkward, lunging way one does when moving through water.

The devil’s wails stopped, and a few seconds later the flamethrower went out as Sam ensured the beast was dead and tossed it aside before turning and meeting me as I was sloshing into ankle-deep water.

“I’ve got you,” he said, grabbing me by both arms just above the elbows.  His eyes roved over me, lingered on my shoulders, and finally settled on my eyes. “Are you okay?”

I nodded. “Relatively,” I said. My teeth chattered together on the ‘t.’ I craned my neck to look at my right shoulder. It was hard to see much in the dark, but the coat was shredded, and judging by the shooting pain, if it hadn’t been for the dunking in the lake it’d be dark with blood. “Good thing I didn’t spend much on this coat, I guess.”

He shot me an unamused look. “Come on,” he said. He turned and led us back to camp. He pointed to the tent. “Change.”

I crawled into the tent and shimmied out of my jeans and into a dry pair without too much protest from my shoulders, but moving them in the way I needed to to take off my coat or shirt shot fire through them and down my arms and up my neck where it buried in my jaw and rattled my teeth. Sam had to use a knife to cut the fabric and peel it off, and I wrapped a blanket around my torso and huddled as close to the fire as I possibly could without burning, trying to reabsorb some heat as he inspected the damage.

Sam shined flashlight on the wounds to better assess their condition. He let out a low whistle. “Well, the good news is you’ve stopped bleeding.”

“The bad-d?”

“It’s gonna be a bitch to patch up.” He moved away from me and went into the tent, coming back with a small black bag. I forced myself to look and grimaced. The left was decently torn, with four short but deep punctures, three in back and one in the front. The right had the worst of it; where the claw had torn out when Sam shot it, the skin had been ripped upward, so the four punctures from the claws had raked together into one large, jagged wound.

“You  _ can _ patch it-t, r-right?” Damn, it was cold. I tried to scoot closer to the fire.

Sam looked offended I’d even asked. He pulled out a bottle of peroxide, gauze, a needle and fishing line...the usual stitching supplies. He opened a bottle of ibuprofen and shook a few pills into my palm. “I don’t know how much good this will do, but it’s something.” 

I tossed the pills back as he circled back behind me and sat down. “Sorry in advance,” he said, and poured peroxide over first my left and then my right shoulder.

“Aaarrrgggh FUCK!” I shouted as the chemicals bubbled and hissed. “Jesus Christ! NOW you have peroxide?”

He dabbed at the wound with gauze, then leaned around me to place the tip of a needle into the fire. “Picked it up the other day after you whined about it.” Was he teasing me?  
I gritted my teeth. “‘ _Let’s go hunt the Jersey Devil,_ ’ he said. _‘It’ll be fine,’_ he said...” I muttered.

He snorted, and I felt the needle prick into my shoulder. I kept talking, trying to keep myself distracted. “So, we’ve both had to patch the other up within a week.”

Another stitch. “And?”

“A little much, don’t you think?”

Another. He was silent. Then, “We both could afford to be more careful.”

I got the feeling that Sam hadn’t had as many mishaps before I’d showed up. I couldn’t speak to his encounter with the demon last week, but I knew the Jersey Devil would never have gotten so close without one of us knowing if we hadn’t been so wrapped up in our personal issues. Before, Sam and I had made a killer team, so in-tune with one another on hunts that we hardly needed to speak to know what the other was about to do and how to support. Now we were practically interrupting each other’s instincts.

He finished the stitching on my left shoulder and moved to the right, sitting near my hip but facing behind me so he could better reach the tears just above my collarbone. “This one’s going to suck,” he said. He fidgeted with the needle, struggling to navigate it around the bone, and I sucked in a breath, clenching my fists around my knees.

“Hey, Y/N. Do me a favor. Pick up that gauze by you.”

He’d left it sitting on the bag on my left side, and I grabbed it with my left hand and held it toward him. He was still stitching, pulling the shredded skin together as best as he could. 

“Wipe off some of this blood for me.” Part of the wound near the top of my shoulder had started to bleed again, not much, but enough to get in his way when it ran down to where he was stitching. I dabbed at it gently with the gauze.

“Thanks.”

His face was so close to mine that if I wanted to, I could touch our foreheads together. I almost  _ did  _ want to, but my feelings betrayed me. Sam didn’t want intimacy-- _ that _ was perfectly clear. And I wasn’t about to go looking for it, only to face the sting of his coldness again. Still, I watched him,  hair falling in his eyes as his hands worked deftly across my skin like he was writing a letter. Sensing my stare, he paused and looked up.

“You okay?”

I held his gaze, trying to read him, trying to feel him again. There was almost something--that same desire as that night--but I stamped it out.

“Yeah.” I swallowed. “I’m okay.”

He watched my eyes a moment longer and then returned to his task.

“So the monster’s dead,” I said. “Now what?”

“Now,” he said, “We go back and you take it easy.”

“What, no more hunts? No salt and burns?

He shook his head. “At least not for awhile. This isn’t a serious injury, but it could’ve been, and it’ll take time to heal.”

“What about the missing girl? You think she’s alive?”

“No. I don’t. Not even a little. There’s nothing in the lore about storing prey. He took her, and he ate her.”

_ How can he be so okay with that? _

When he finally finished the stitches, he wrapped gauze around both shoulders and tied it tight. “Don’t move too much,” he said. “Those’ll pull out.”

I adjusted the blanket so it covered my shoulders. My body temperature had finally returned to normal, but a breeze had picked up and the November air was unforgiving in New Jersey.

“I’ll take first watch,” he said, standing and packing away the medical supplies. 

“First watch from what? You think there’s any other predators around with that thing living here? Really?”

“Can’t be too careful,” he offered by way of explanation. 

I stood and rolled my shoulders, feeling stiff, and went to the tent. I curled up in the sleeping bag and closed my eyes, but spent the good part of an hour trying to find a comfortable position. No matter how I lay, my shoulders were rubbed or stretched or pushed on, and it was just irritating enough to keep me from slipping past semi-consciousness and into real sleep.

I must have drifted off at some point, because I startled awake at a noise outside the tent and could tell from the light that the fire had died down. I was still alone in the tent. I tensed, reaching down for the knife on my leg as something. There was a shuffling sound, a thump, and then a burst of orange as flames lashed at the air. Leaves rustled and I could see Sam’s silhouette settle by the fire. I relaxed.

I looked at my watch. It was almost 1 a.m. What was he still doing up?

I gathered the sleeping bag around me, unzipped the tent and poked my head out. Sure enough, Sam was sitting by the fire, his back to me, apparently just staring into the flames, unmoving. 

“You’re still awake?”

He craned his head around. “Not tired.”

_ Weird. _

“Well, since you’re up, do you just wanna hike back tonight?”

I groaned at the thought of trudging through the woods in the dark, exhausted and sore as I was, and wondered how he didn’t seem even remotely tired, but rather bored. “Not even a little.”

I hesitated between curling back up in the tent or joining him by the heat of the fire. I ached; my shoulders burned and winter had settled into the marrow of my bones. I chose the fire; bundled up in the sleeping bag, I sat beside him again.

“You wish I could leave, don’t you?” I asked. I wasn’t accusing him of or blaming him for anything. I was just calling it as it was.

He took his time responding. “Yeah. I do.”

I nodded. I tried to joke: “But I’m just  _ wonderful _ company.”

He didn’t laugh. Instead, he angled slightly toward me and tried to catch my eye.  “Doesn’t it freak you out a little how this is going down? How you even got here?”

I contemplated whether he was actually interested in my response or just conducting research. “Yes. I’m terrified.  _ Really _ . But it’s also classically Winchester.”

“What?”

“You don’t get out, even when you die. Even when you leave the country and start over. I’m not saying I ever expected to come back or to find you, and it scares the shit out of me, but I can’t honestly say I’m that surprised.”

He snorted, a sound that I took to mean  _ yeah, I get that. _

There was another long stretch of silence. I was spinning with words I wanted to say, with questions I wanted answered, with emotion I wanted to share. It was dangerous territory; I didn’t know him anymore. I believe we each saw him as someone else; he was Sam from now, I still wanted Sam from a year ago. 

I risked it and said, “But in a way I’m relieved.”

That shook him from whatever reverie he’d been in. “Sorry,  _ relieved? _ ”

I nodded, my gaze fixed on the ground. “Well, yeah. You’re out of the Pit. You’re okay, I think. We’re together in... _ some _ capacity. I’m not grieving anymore.”

He sighed and scrubbed a hand across his face. “Y/N…”

“Don’t,” I snapped. “I know. It’s not the same. You’re different.” I hesitated, suddenly unsure. “Aren’t you?”

He was silent so long I thought he’d chosen to ignore me. Finally he said, “Yeah. I’m different.”

I bit my lip. “I just--”

He cut me off. “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. The other night was a mistake. I should have known you’d read into it, but we can’t go back to before. It didn’t mean anything.”

My breath hitched. I’d known it, but hearing him say it made it worse. I couldn’t take a breath.

“When this is over, you can go back to Costa Rica. Pick things up where you left off.”

“I don’t want to,” I managed to choke out.

“Then somewhere else. I don’t know. Not with me.”

I turned away from him and toward the darkness, trying to hide the hand that brushed the tears off my face before responding. “Listen,” I said. He pulled his head back, screwing up his brows. “Can we be honest about this for a minute?”

He practically rolled his eyes but then settled.  “Okay. Fine. Shoot.”

“We’re family,” I said firmly. “And if I’ve learned anything from you and Dean, it’s that we stick together regardless of what crap is going on. Costa Rica might as well have been a daydream; it doesn’t matter.” I jabbed a finger at him. “ _ This  _ is my reality. I don’t know what else I can go back to at this point.”

He blinked. “I thought you didn’t trust me.”

I threw it right back at him. “Do  _ you  _ really trust  _ me _ ?”

He seemed at a loss for words. 

“That’s what I thought,” I said. “And I get that it’s different with us. I don’t have to be an empath to feel that. Fine. But I can’t walk away, Sam. So we can work this job. And then...I don’t know. We keep hunting. We can be partners. I can bury whatever I’m feeling that you’re obviously not.  I’m just asking to stay with you up until whatever the end is.”

We met each other with a solid intensity, a stalemate, neither one of us willing to back down. But he nodded. “Just so long as we’re clear.”

“We’re clear,” I said. I hated it, would hate it, but better this than nothing. Better within his reach than away from him. 

“You should try to get a few hours of sleep,” Sam said in way of acceptance, and he suddenly felt too close. I needed the space, and I took his out, nodding and shuffling back into the tent to pass a few more hours, wondering if he ever slept anymore. 

  
  



	7. Chapter 7

Sam woke early, as usual, after only a few hours of rest. He couldn’t call it sleep, exactly. He just dozed, his body refreshing itself, and then was up and moving again. 

Y/N was still asleep; he was a little surprised that she’d managed to sleep at all, and although he hadn’t laid down close to her, she’d shifted farther away from him sometime during the night. Too warm, probably; he’d been running hot since coming back topside.

He got up slowly and left the tent, then started to pack away camp. He wanted to get out of the woods and back to the cabin early; he had a laundry list in his head of business to discuss with the demons, and he was eager to put some space between himself and Y/N.

He sighed, clearing away some of the ash from the fire. He’d been self-assured in his purpose back on Earth, confident and composed. He’d have done anything to escape Lucifer’s Cage, and after sixty years an opportunity had just dropped into his lap. He’d accepted without thought.

That had been simple. He hadn’t even minded the lack of morality. And then Castiel had shown up, offered him a chance at redemption, and he’d grasped at it like a starving man.

His objectives were clear; his deceit was flawless. He didn’t question the motive, the orders, the danger. He just acted, always knowing just what to do, what to say, to fool them. It was almost too easy of a part to play; his powers came innately, the sinister tone was a natural register for him, and he had no qualms about playing dirty.

There were physical changes, too. His body temperature and resting heart rate were higher. He seemed to see better in low-light. He didn’t get sick, and recovered quickly from physical harm. He needed less rest and fewer calories to function--no, to  _ thrive. _

Because he  _ was _ thriving, for the first time in years.

And then she’d shown up.

The situation had changed completely. When he’d found her in the basement, he hadn’t thought, he’d reacted, plunging them both into an elaborate game of deception where even Sam wasn’t sure which side he was on.

He rubbed his temples. The real problem, he realized, was that it wasn’t just  _ him _ involved anymore. He could easily keep up the devil’s soldier facade...if it weren’t for her. If he didn’t have to shield her as well as himself, and add an additional layer of lies to his charade.

But what had he been supposed to do? Leave her? Treat her like any other poor psychic that’d been unfortunate enough to visit Atlantic City? It’s not like he _cared_ about her. He just remembered that he used to.

_ Unfortunate my ass, _ he thought.  _ She was pulled here. _

He swore when he found out who, or what, had upset his flawless plan, he would kill him.

He thought about what she’d said, about sticking with him to the end, and he thought that her loyalty was suicidal. But he couldn’t blame her.

He loved her, didn’t he? Or had, at least. On some level, that was still true. There was affection, and warmth, and passion, but it was buried beneath sixty years in Hell and a year and a half of consorting with the enemy. That part of him, the part of him that jumped into the Cage, wanted her close to him, wanted to hold her, wanted to abandon the mission and take her and leave, try to find some semblance of normalcy.

The rest of him--the bigger part, the logical part, the part that came  _ out _ of the Cage--disagreed. He wanted her away from him, wished she’d never left Costa Rica. Wished he’d never known she’d been captured. Not because he wanted her safe. Because she was interfering with his objective, in the way, and royally fucking with his head.

Because if he was being honest with himself, he knew he didn’t care about her, but that he was  _ supposed  _ to. And he’d couldn’t seem to find the right balance of too much or too little.

And he been stupid enough to sleep with her. He should’ve known better. Should’ve realized she’d think it was something more than sex. Which is why he’d made himself scarce the past week.

He heard the tent unzip and looked up as Y/N stepped out, pulling her duffel bag behind her. She’d put on one of his flannels.

“I, uh,” she cleared her throat. “Couldn’t pull my hoodie on.”

Sam shrugged and tried not to frown.  _ You set your boundaries. She knows. It’s just practicality. _  “That’s fine. Once we break down the tent we can get out of here. How do you feel?”

“Achy,” she said, gingerly lifting and then lowering her shoulders. “But okay.”

Sam nodded. “Let’s get moving,” he said.

They broke down the tent and packed their bags, triple-checking the ground for any dropped supplies, and hit the trail. Sam shouldered most of the weight; Y/N couldn’t carry anything on her shoulders, so she cradled a duffel bag in her arms and huffed along.

They reached the car around 8 a.m. and drove back, stopping to pick up a quick McDonald’s breakfast on the way. They unpacked at the cabin, and Sam headed for the door. 

“Duty calls,” he said, trying to sound light and falling flat.

Her face sank, he thought, maybe a flash of frustration crossing her features, but she hid it well, glancing away.

He was supposed to do something here, he thought. He wasn’t used to having another person around, especially someone who cared about him beyond the call of duty. He was used to being alone; he did  _ better _ alone, actually. He thought back to the night before, how the Jersey Devil had somehow gotten the jump on them, and knew that, had Y/N not been there to distract him, it would’ve gone differently; no one would have been hurt, and it would’ve been a clean, easy job.

He felt an echo of something like guilt. He didn’t mean to be cold. Didn’t want to be. But he’d been stripped down to nothing but blood and bone and meat, numbed to true human feeling. It wasn’t that he’d forgotten what human emotion felt like, just that he lacked the instinct. He’d once been the sensitive one, the comforter, all puppy eyes and warm pleading. Now he was unfeeling, obedient, remorseless. 

Like a demon. Or maybe more like an angel. Like Lucifer.

He knew he was supposed to do something here, but he didn’t have the energy to feign honest affection. He started to move toward her, paused, began raising his hands, stopped them at his hips and then dropped them back to his sides. He shifted and turned away.

“I’ll be back,” he called over his shoulder. The door snapped quietly behind him.

He got into the car and drove to the compound, scratching his head. Y/N was a glitch in the system, a detour he wasn’t sure how to navigate, but he had to try to care about her. All notions of romance were long gone, but he remembered love, even if he couldn’t feel it.

* * *

Garrett met Sam  at the door as soon as he pulled up.

“We need to talk,” he said, as Sam reached the threshold. Sam didn’t miss the excitement in his voice.

He didn’t take the bait immediately, instead sliding comfortably into his role. “I’ll be the judge of that,” he said, pushing past the demon and passing through the main room to a smaller office to the right. He dropped his bag next to an old desk and began rummaging in one of the drawers, pretending to be busy.

Garrett followed him and leaned on the doorframe, his arms crossed over his chest. “It’s about the girl. Your girl.”

Sam feigned interest in a piece of paper and muttered, “What about her?”

“They got a look at her blood upstairs. You’re gonna want to talk to the lab techs. They uh...well, they think you need to bring her in.”

A cold hand knotted Sam’s intestines, but he kept his face set and let out a huff of irritation as he shoved past Garrett on his way out. “While I’m dealing with this,” he growled, “make yourself useful and restock the bin in the yard. I have work to do later.”

Upstairs, he found Jordon bent over a computer, manipulating numbers on a spreadsheet.  
“Jordon.”

She straightened and turned. “Sam--” She stopped, seeing something in his eyes, perhaps, or the set of his shoulders, that warned her.

“You wanted to see me?” He took a step forward. She stood and took a half-step away from him. 

She swallowed. “I did,” she said. “It’s about that girl’s blood. We found something I thought would interest you.”

Sam crossed his arms and raised his eyebrows. He  _ was  _ interested. He was also on-edge. He’d anticipated that they’d want Y/N here, but he hadn’t been prepared for it. Still, his curiosity was stronger than his concern.

“I’m listening.”

“We knew she was an empath, so like you said, I isolated the empath cells. Like usual, I started to duplicate them and look for cells to combine them with. You know, other blood samples. Nothing was really taking, so I looked at yours.…”

He didn’t say anything, just stared at her. Making her sweat.

She tried to smile and failed, looking pained instead. “You didn’t tell us she was an empath  _ because of you. _ ”

Sam shifted. “I didn’t think that was pertinent. What difference does it make?”

She blinked. “A lot, actually. You realize your blood is the most powerful blood we’ve got, right? And that an empath is the  _ exact _ kind of psychic we need? And then we find one and discover she’s  _ your _ empath? From  _ your _ blood?”

“Get to the point,” he snapped.

“It’s a recipe for perfection, is what it is,” she said. Her voice grew more excited the more she spoke. “We need to get her in for observation, run more tests. I want to put an IV in her and pump some of your blood in, see if that can strengthen her abilities. You need to bring her here, so--”

Sam closed the distance between them in one stride and backed her into the wall, grabbed the lapel of her lab coat and bent his face close to hers.

“You’re in charge now?” he snarled.

She was terrified--she knew he could kill her with a look. “I-I didn’t--”

“You don’t order, you don’t even  _ suggest _ . You--”

“Sam!” a voice barked, cheerful, exuberant. “I was  _ hoping _ you’d show up today! We need to talk;  _ I _ made that call about bringing the girl in, not Jordon.”

Sam turned, but kept his hand pressed against her.

It was Markus. As demons went, he ranked higher than most, but not quite the level of, say, Alastair. It was Markus who’d been the brains behind this whole “blood and psychics” operation, who’d guided Sam down the right paths, taught him about the Horn, set up the compound and prepared for Sam’s arrival.

Sam didn’t know who outranked Markus or who’d officially saved him from the Devil. He  _ did _ know that he could kill Markus if he really wanted to, and that idea was sounding more pleasing by the second.

“What’re you talking about?”

Markus wore a shark’s grin with his lab coat; the combination made him look like a sadistic Dr. Robert. After all he’d seen in his life, there were few things that gave Sam the creeps: Markus was one of them. 

Markus clapped his hands together and rubbed them quickly. “Right!” He said. “When Jordon made the connection between you and our empath, I knew we  _ had _ to get our hands on her. It’s just too delicious to pass up, don’t you think?”

“What I think,” Sam warned, “Is that you’ve forgotten who’s in charge.” He shoved off of Jordon and stepped toward Markus. Jordon slid along the wall away from him.

Markus’s smiled wavered and his eyes darted for a split second to the door, but he recovered flawlessly and held up his hands in submission. “Of course, you call the shots,  _ Boss _ . But this is an asset, a real key. We  _ need _ her here.”

Sam shook his head and forced a dark chuckle. “You have no idea how empaths work, do you? You can’t throw one in a cage and expect it to produce. They’re  _ feelers _ . Throw them into chaos and they’re chaos. They need to be calm to function.”

Markus scoffed. “Well tell us then, Sam. How well is that strategy working out for us?”

“It hasn’t been long,” he said. “I need more time. Trust me, Markus, your way will  _  not _ work.”

Markus flashed that grin again, the one that threatened and challenged. “You're taking too long, Sam. The others are getting restless. They’re starting to question your leadership, you know. Saying you’re soft. Saying you’re too human for this.”

Sam said nothing, just glowered. He felt his control slipping. He raked his brain for excuses, sifted through every alternative he could. Here, finally, was what he’d feared: that they’d demand her, and he’d have no choice but to hand her over or reveal his own treachery. And what would that mean for his mission? His stomach clenched at the thought of what they could be capable of.

It wasn’t so much concern for her safety; they were too close as it was. With Y/N in their hands they could potentially have a direct line to the Horn. Her powers weren’t manifesting now, but who knew what those demons could do to change that? And if they got the Horn, he’d have more than Y/N’s life on his hands. 

But maybe this could be a good thing. If they needed her, they wouldn’t really hurt her. She’d likely be treated the same as the psychic they were already keeping upstairs. She’d be out of his way, too; he could focus on the job without maintaining the facade of feeling something for her. It would be far simpler to act cold and cruel, the way he had been the past year, so he could put all of his energy on finding the Horn. He’d have all of his problems under one roof, under the umbrella of one lie instead of two, and he could play it out his way, by his rules…

He knew that thinking was worse than breaking her trust and handing her over, and yet he saw no logical alternative, no safe escape plan, nothing that would allow him to maintain his credibility. He was deep undercover at this point; he couldn’t afford to side with her.

He nodded slowly. “I see your point,” he said. He took a step toward Markus, raising his voice. A few demons nearby stopped in their work and looked up. “But how  _ dare _ you even think to question my authority, or put yourself above me.” He shoved Markus backwards, and the demon grinned.

“That’s what I thought,” he sneered. “Fearless  _ leader _ .”

Sam growled and flicked his wrist, sending him writhing and wailing on the floor. Now dozens of eyes were on him. He was furious, rage surging through his blood.

“Anyone else want to question me today?” he shouted, glaring back at all of them. They looked away, frozen in fear. “That’s what I thought.” Sam twisted his wrist and Markus stilled, panting. Sam loomed over him. “I’ll be back with her tomorrow night. It shouldn’t take more than two of you. Have everything ready. Wait for my word.”

He strode from the lab, feeling a rush of warm power when demons darted away from him. He’d scared them, reminded them of his power, and that satisfied him momentarily, but lurking beneath the surface was a cold dread and iron fury, and he was desperate to get out.

Judith was leaning against his car when he left the warehouse, and she pushed off it and moved toward him when he approached. “Not now, Judith,” he growled. 

“Sam,” she protested, blocking his path. “Listen.”

He huffed a breath, considered just killing her, but then stopped. “I’m not in the mood for your bullshit.”

“I know you like the power trip,” she said, almost crooning. “I know you don’t like when they fell you what to do. And  _ I _ know you’re in charge. We all do, you know. And I’ll do anything you ask… But your plans are too careful. Too human. It’s not your fault, really. You can’t kill that instinct.”

“Is there a point to this?” 

A shadow crossed her face. She looked offended. “You know if we had the time, we could go your way. The slow way.”

“And?”  
  
“Markus is worried about the angels. He’s trying to speed things along. It’s not a lack of trust, Sam, it’s time. It’s all about time.” 

She reached up and stroked his cheek with her hand. He turned his head and it fell away. She was trying to comfort, but Sam felt physically ill.

“I have to go,” he said, shoving her off. “I have a kidnapping to orchestrate.”

* * *

Thirty miles down the road and still fifteen from the cabin, Sam pulled off the road into an empty truck stop and called for Castiel.

To his surprise, the angel appeared almost instantly. 

Sam whirled on him. “What do you know?” he demanded.

Castiel blinked. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“You LIED to me!” Sam shouted. “All that bullshit about the demons not being able to  _ really _ use Y/N? You knew, didn’t you? You knew as soon as I brought her back!”

Castiel sighed but didn’t take his eyes from Sam’s. “I knew,” he said. “And I’d hoped we could use her to our advantage.” He looked at Sam quizzically, calculating. “Something’s happened. What’s wrong?”

Sam paced, threw his arms out to his sides. “The demons figured that out, too,” he snapped. “And they’re demanding I bring her to them.”

Castiel nodded solemnly. “I feared this would happen.”

Sam’s eyes flashed. He shook his head, stepping closer to the angel. “Oh no. No no. You don’t get to say ‘ _ I feared this would happen. _ ’ You kept me in the dark. Completely. I said I wanted her shipped back to Costa Rica and you said she had to stay  _ to keep me in the clear. _ No. Fuck this, Castiel. You wanted her to stay so you could use her and now the enemy wants her for the same purpose. What do you say about that?”

“You have to give her to them.”

Sam gawked at him. “You’re kidding, right? Put our best asset right in their hands?”

“What do you want me to say, Sam?”

“That it’s suicide. I want you to zap her somewhere else so we can get this job done without putting ourselves at more risk. Putting a civilian at risk.”

Castiel raised his eyebrows at “civilian” but shook his head. “I can’t,” the angel said. “You have to keep playing along. You  _ cannot _ give yourself away, Sam. Your position is crucial. We need you on the inside.”

Sam ran a hand through his hair. “What am I supposed to tell her, Cas? She trusts us.”

“Nothing,” he replied. “You tell her nothing about this. If she knows you’re acting out of necessity, she’ll give us away. She has to believe you’ve been playing her the entire time.”

The reality of what that meant hit Sam like a freight train. Sam blew out a long breath.  “Jesus, Cas.”

Castiel seemed to consider something a moment, then said, “I may be able to give her some kind of protection. I will return.” He vanished.

Reluctantly, Sam climbed back into the car and sat behind the wheel for several long minutes, just staring at the road. Cas was right: He couldn’t tell her anything. She had to fear for her life, had to register his betrayal on her face or they’d never buy it. He didn’t like it. He was far removed from any emotion but he remembered it well enough to know how awful this would be.

Still. He realized that in the grand scheme of things, it would be better if she saw him as a monster and a traitor instead of maintaining the false belief that he was the same as he’d been years ago. 

* * *

He got home around 9 p.m.  The cabin was dark; he opened the door and saw that just the kitchen light was on, and an alternating blue glow from the TV. Y/N was already asleep on the couch, a blanket around her knees, a book face-down on her stomach, and what looked like  _ On the Waterfront _ playing on the TV.

Sam took off his coat and boots as quietly as he could, then flipped off the kitchen light. He slipped into the living room, picked up the book ( _ The Sword of Moses _ , which she’d been trying to use for research _ ) _ ,  placed it gently on the table, and pulled the blanket up over her shoulders. She shifted slightly but slept.

He straightened and turned to go to his own room, but the light from the TV caught his eye and he remembered to turn it off. He paused, remote in his hand, as Marlon Brando lamented the famous  _ “I coulda been a contender!” _ and considered his own fate, and his brother’s, and now, ultimately, Y/N’s--what they all  _ coulda  _ been. Regardless of how essential his role in all of this was, he couldn’t help feeling the weight of it this once. 

He glanced down at her, asleep on the couch, then back to the TV. With a sigh he lowered himself onto the floor, sitting with his legs spread under the coffee table and his back against the front of the couch.  He stared at the screen, not really watching it, but not willing to leave the room. He needed the proximity after today, needed that human closeness that had been absent the past year. It was strange and cruel, Sam thought, that it was so difficult for him to feel pure, human emotions, but that loneliness came like breathing. Before, he’d always had Dean. Companionship. Someone who could feel, who understood. Since he’d come back, it’d been him and demons and sometimes Castiel. As absurd a thought as it was, he felt he needed humanity if he wanted to stay human. 

So he sat on the floor, leaning against the couch, listening to Y/N’s steady breathing behind him, and tried not to think about what he had to do. She needed to go; he knew that. Hell, he  _ wanted _ her gone. But he couldn’t deny that there was comfort here. And maybe he didn’t care about  _ her, _ but he wasn’t so far gone that he thought turning her over was acceptable.

Not that it mattered. He had to get the job done.

The rhythm of her breathing changed and she shifted behind him. Sam didn’t move, thinking she’d fall back asleep, but she spoke. “Hey. What time is it?”

He cleared his throat. “A little after nine, I think.”

She yawned. “Damn. Slept longer than I planned.”

“Might as well stay asleep at this point.”

“You okay?”

He didn’t want to look at her; he feared what she’d read on his face and he feared he’d collapse under the weight of what he had to do if he had to meet her eyes even once.  He should’ve just stayed out.

So instead he stood up, rubbing his hands on the front of his jeans. “Yeah,” he said, keeping his eyes forward. “Do you want this on?” He gestured to the TV.

She didn’t answer him, just said, “Sam?”

He ran a hand through his hair and then pinched the skin between his eyes. “I’m good,” he said, even though he knew that she knew he wasn’t. She knew something was wrong based purely on the fact that she’d woken up with him so close. “Just a long couple of days. Get some sleep. I’ll talk to you in the morning.”

He shuffled away to his room, still not looking at her, and considered getting the car before morning and driving halfway across the country.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All right, so I realize I'm stretching the limit's of soulless Sam's emotional capabilities. Part of that is because I wrote a lot of this during the hiatus between Season 5 and 6, and when I started 6 and Sam had no soul, I had to go back and change things. Still, I think part of being human is the desire for companionship of some sort, just like dogs want to be with a pack by nature, so I can justify Sam reaching for that on a basic level. If I've gone too far, let me know!
> 
> Also, if you've never seen On the Waterfront, you're missing out!


	8. Chapter 8

When I woke up the next morning, Castiel was watching me from the kitchen table.

“Creepy, Cas,” I said, sitting up with a groan. I reached for the bottle of ibuprofen on the coffee table.

Castiel moved fluidly to my side. “Let me help,” he said, and without waiting for a response he placed his fingertips on my shoulders. 

Warmth spread into them and through the rest of my body as the stitches vanished and the wounds closed themselves, the pain lifting and dissipating into the air. He stepped back and nodded in approval.

I’d seen him bring Dean back from the brink of death, his face transformed from a pulpy mess to smooth and flawless, and yet experiencing that was something else altogether. “Wow,” I breathed. “Thanks.”

“Anything to help,” he said. His eyes lingered on mine just a little too long. 

Before I could ask what he was thinking, the front door opened and Sam came in carrying a box of donuts and two cups of coffee. He gave Castiel a questioning look, which the angel answered with a nod before vanishing. Sam turned his attention to me.

“There’s a job, if you’re up for it,” he told me. “Which I’m guessing you are, if Cas fixed you up.”

We clearly were not going to talk about his strange behavior the day before, but he’d always been a closed book, and we were long past my being able to read him. I was surprised more at his rapid ricochet to another job than anything else. “Sure…” I said, eyes roving over the piles of lore books on the coffee table and wondering when run-of-the-mill monsters had become more important than saving the world...again. But I stood and went to the table, grabbing a vanilla long-john and taking a sip of coffee. “What’ve we got?”

“Should be a standard haunting,” he said. “Old quarry, about thirty miles from here. Overheard some people talking about it this morning. Figured it’s worth checking out.”

“Sure,” I said. “When should we go?”

“Not until tonight. Locals are saying there’s no activity during the day, so we’ll spend the day prepping and head out after sunset.” He sat down and took a drag of coffee, pulling his laptop toward him and flipping it open. 

I finished the donut and grabbed another, sitting down across from him. “So...research? Talking to people?”

He didn’t blink. “Talked to a few witnesses this morning. We can try to find out if any quarry workers died on the job, or if any kids snuck in and didn’t sneak out.”

“What’s going on with you?”

He glanced up, cocked his head. “What?”

“I don’t know...you’re just…” I had no idea what he was. “Nevermind. I dunno.”

He looked at me a second and went back to work.

It was a mostly silent, research-heavy, weapons-cleaning, fruitless day. A worker  _ had _ lost a hand back in ‘97, but there hadn’t been any deaths, and the quarry had shut down in ‘08 for completely legitimate reasons. 

Still, just past sunset we were suited up and armed with the spirit essentials: rock salt, shotguns, and iron. Ruby’s knife was again strapped to my leg, unbeknownst to Sam. 

Sam drove us down winding forest roads to towering metal gates that stood open and crooked, the headlights throwing their long shadows out before us. He parked the car and we got out, grabbed our gear from the trunk and clicked on flashlights. Sam took the lead as we walked through.

In the flashlight beams I could see the sharply cut rocks and piles of stone and gravel spread across the facility. There was a still, dark pool of water maybe 25 yards from us. I panned the flashlight beam over a square, multi-story building that had seen better days. “I guess that’s where we go?”

“Guess so,” Sam said. He strode forward and I stayed close on his heels. When we reached the door, he gave it a tentative push and it swung inward, hinges groaning in protest.

The room inside was dark and large, but the air was fresh, not the musky, dank air that inhabits spaces long closed-up and vacant. I scanned the room, surprised at the cleanliness, the lack of dust and cobwebs. It was mostly empty, save for some pieces of furniture that not only weren’t rotted through and ancient, but also didn’t belong in a warehouse: a few armchairs, a futon, a table…

“What the hell?” I said, taking a few steps. Across the room a large map covered most of one wall, papers and markers tacked into it. Just below it another large table was scattered with books and pages. “I don’t...are you seeing this?”

Before he could respond, a loud  _ CRASH _ sounded from above us. We both jumped, looked at each other in alarm. “Let’s go,” Sam said. He cocked his shotgun and swung around, light landing on a set of stairs. We hurried toward it and he ushered me forward. “Take point. I’ll cover your six; I can shoot over you if I have to.”

I nodded and moved up the stairs. At the top we found another door. I looked over my shoulder and met Sam’s eyes. His expression was set. He nodded.

I pushed down on the handle and shoved it forward. It swung wide and I braced for impact, but nothing met us. Directly in front of us was another open room, straight ahead just poured concrete floor. I walked forward, feeling Sam behind me, and turned left.

I just registered the outline of a person right in front of me, light glinting off black eyes  before I dropped the flashlight and jumped backward with a yelp, the shotgun exploding deafeningly as I pulled the trigger on reflex.

The demon shouted in pain as I stumbled backward into Sam, light spinning from the ground as the flashlight rolled across the floor. Then Sam’s hands were gripping my arms tightly, yanking them back and forcing me still. 

“Sam--”

“Drop the gun.”

“What?!”

“Drop it!”

I opened my hands and it clattered to the ground. I tried to move away but Sam tightened his grip, pinning me against him. There was movement to our left.

“Fuck, Sam! Shotgun hurts like a bitch. You could’ve warned me.”

“Shut up,” he snapped. “And turn on the lights.”

There was a loud click followed by a low hum, and above us florescent lights began to flicker on, casting a sickly glow on the room.

I blinked in the sudden light and my eyes darted across the room. Rows of cages stood on one side, empty save for one at the far end, where an old man sat staring at us. Slightly behind us was a glass wall and what looked like...a lab? But what--

Panic rose like bile in my throat as I realized where we were, and my knees shook as a wave of vertigo washed over me.  _ How? _

The demon I’d shot walked toward us, the front of her shirt torn to shreds and soaked in blood from the wound that had already closed. My hands twitched, itching to reach for the knife strapped to my leg. She sneered at me behind black bangs, crimson lips stark against her pale skin. “So you’re what all the fuss is about.” She tilted her head to one side and tapped a finger against her chin, studying me. “She doesn’t have much fight in her, does she?” She circled to my right, eyes roving up and down. “Hmm. Don’t see the appeal.”

My feet were glued to the floor. I couldn’t move, couldn’t fight, couldn’t speak, couldn’t  _ think _ past the blood pounding in my ears. From across the room another demon stepped forward, took out a ring of keys and opened one of the cages.I tried to turn, to crane my neck to look at Sam, but he kept his eyes fixed forward. 

“Sam,” I rasped, mouth dry. “What--?.” He couldn’t. It wasn’t him. Even as off as he’d been, he’d fought to keep me out, pleaded with me to leave. This wasn’t right, it couldn’t be real, it wasn’t  _ him. _

Sam said nothing but shoved me forward. I vainly tried to dig in my heels, but my legs were rubber and my strength was no match for his. He pushed me almost effortlessly toward the open cage.

As we neared the cage the second demon pulled a syringe from his pocket. Something snapped in my brain and I jerked away, fighting Sam’s grip. “Let me GO!” I screamed, and raked my heel down Sam’s shin, a move he’d taught me years ago. His knee buckled and his grip lessened. I threw my weight forward, trying to slip out and go for the knife, but he followed it and the momentum sent me slamming into the metal bars, Sam pressing behind me.

“Hurry, Garrett,” he growled. I struggled, trapped between cold metal and Sam’s chest, and felt a needle prick into my neck, burning before it was withdrawn.

Sam pulled me off the cage and I tried to spin into him, but with a careful shove I went sprawling into the cage and before I could recover, the door slammed shut.

I threw myself at the bars and shook the door; it didn’t budge. Didn’t even groan.

“That should kick in in a few minutes,” Garrett was saying. “Want me to keep an eye on her?”

Sam glanced at me and then shook his head. “No. She isn’t going anywhere. Make sure Jordon’s ready for her tomorrow. We’ll want to get started early.”

“You wanna stay tonight, Sam? Or are you going home?” The first demon was leaning against the other cage, one hand on a cocked hip, eyebrows raised suggestively.

“Leave, Judith,” he said. 

She pouted and turned. “Make sure you give your girl a kiss goodnight,” she crooned, running a hand over his chest as she strode toward the door. Sam’s gaze followed her. “Or at least one of us.” She met my eyes with a smirk and winked. I clutched the bars as my legs shook, trying not to vomit or faint or collapse.

I licked my lips, searching for any moisture, my guts made of lead, my brain spinning a thousand wheels as I stared at him and tried to understand, to rationalize…

“Sam,” I called as he and Garrett turned away. “Sam, please. Don’t do this.”

They kept walking. I stared at the straight line of his shoulders, my vision starting to swim. “Sam!” I called again. “This isn’t you!”

He stopped. Then he turned, and his face was fury. He crossed to the cage in three strides and gripped the bars just beside my hands and put his face inches from mine. 

“ _ Me _ ?” he growled. “ _ Me? _ ” His eyes suddenly softened, his lips turned up in a cruel smile.  “You really thought I’d come back normal? You  _ really _ expected me to be the same? Sam, the lover-boy. Sam, the boy who saved the world.” He laughed, a rough, crazed bark. “You dumb bitch,” he sneered. “You should’ve seen right through me.”

My legs gave out and I slipped to the floor, my head hot and cloudy, the edges of my vision dark. Sam straightened, then turned and crossed the room after Garrett. Before they reached the door, I was limp on the concrete.

* * *

 

Hours later, the cold drew me into consciousness. I was shivering on concrete floor in deep darkness. Somewhere in front of me, green and red lights glowed and blinked at irregular intervals. In the distance, there was faint glow as a multi-colored ball bounced back and forth and up and down, seemingly contained inside an invisible square.

I stared at it for several minutes, hypnotized, trying to discern what it was and why my limbs and head all weighed ten tons and why my head felt stuffed full of leaden cotton balls, wanting warmth and knowing it wasn’t there. I curled in on myself. Bounce. Move right. Bounce. Move up. Bounce. Red. Bounce. Blue. Bounce. 

_ It’s a screensaver. You’re looking at a computer monitor. _

Oh.

I squinted at the bouncing ball. Screensaver. That made sense. There’d been a lab, right? So there would’ve been a computer. Lab? What lab? 

I felt pain in my neck and raised my hand. It took hours to get there. I felt a small bump beneath my fingers and remembered the syringe, and the demons, and Sam.

I rolled over and threw up. I wiped a sleeve across my mouth and scooted myself away from it, moving slowly, so slowly, until my back hit metal bars and I pulled up my knees and buried my face in them, breathing slowly  _ in the nose and out the mouth _ , I’d been coached once, and clenching and unclenching my fists.

_ They gave you a tranquilizer. It’ll keep you docile so you’ll do whatever the hell they want you to.  _

I didn’t know how I knew that. I guess it was logical. I certainly felt docile. And cold-- _ so _ cold. I shivered, then giggled. This wasn’t too different from being drunk, really. At least it was too dark to tell if the room was swimming. 

_ There’s a cot in the cage with a blanket. Find it before you fall asleep again. _

I didn’t remember seeing a cot, but a part of me must have and not acknowledged it earlier. I started to pull myself up but the blood rushed out of my head and I tottered and decided to sit back down. Down was good. Down meant I couldn’t fall and break my head open.

I scooted forward, like a toddler on a staircase, with the cage wall on one side of me. It took a hundred years to get anywhere. Eventually my foot bumped into something and I reached forward and squinted, just making out the outline of a bed frame. I went up on my knees and gripped it, lifting myself off of the ground just enough to flop on top of it and then crawl on my stomach until all of me was off the ground.

It was warmer already. And there was a pillow and a coarse blanket. I pulled it on top of me and curled on my side, knees taking minutes to pull up to my chest. My head felt heavy again, my eyelids weighted with fishing sinkers. I thought about bluegill and lakes and slipped away.


	9. Chapter 9

I spent the first day or two in a cocoon of self-pity. I lay curled on my side beneath the rough blanket, staring down the lines of cages at the door to the stairwell. I drifted between drug-induced unconsciousness and a hazy, sluggish wakefulness, and whether it was the strength of the sedative or my personal misery, I couldn’t even be bothered to shrink away from the demons that came in with their needles and syringes and sneers to draw blood. 

Let them take it. Why not? I’d strolled right into their arms, handed over by Sam, who I’d mistakenly believed I could trust. I should have known better.

So, in a daze, I watched the demons milling around the lab, uninterested. I was three for three for “damsel in distress” situations, and while that should have irked me, frustrated me,  _ infuriated  _ me, in my grief I only felt, sorrowfully, that I deserved it.

I drew farther into myself, pulling my knees to my chin and the blanket over my head. I’d started this rendezvous with Sam as his prisoner; it had been bound to end that way. The warning signs had been there and I’d ignored them in the hope that they’d go away and we’d return to normal. Way to go.

_ “You dumb bitch. You should’ve seen right through me.” _

I squeezed my eyes shut and pressed my palms against them. I could probably live a hundred years and never get his words or the way he’d looked when he said them out of my head.

Not Sam, I told myself. Not the old Sam, not my Sam, not the real Sam.

Maybe not the human Sam.

And thinking that, I knew I’d rather him still be dead than this alternative. Was that selfish? Or was it right?

Silently, I wept until sleep took me again.

* * *

 

On the third day, I woke up pissed.

I stirred when the lights buzzed on as demons began trickling in, firing up the machines in the lab and sliding a tray of dry cereal and a cup of water into the cage without so much as a word. I leapt to my feet, ravenous, and scarfed it down. They’d taken the untouched trays from the days before, and my stomach protested.

Fine. Fuel for the fire. 

I paced the perimeter of the cage, running my hands along the bars, checking the corners for any weakness. I rattled the door, reached through and tugged on the padlock, and cursed out loud that I didn’t have a bobby pin or anything I could use to even attempt to pick it. I jumped up and gripped the top of the cage and swung myself back and forth. Nothing budged.

The demons ignored all of this. That was discouraging. That meant they weren’t concerned that I’d escape. That meant the cage was probably pretty impenetrable.

I was hyper aware of the knife still strapped to my calf. They’d apparently had no reason to suspect I was armed beyond the shotgun I’d walked in with and hadn’t patted me down. That was good. What wasn’t good is that there were too many of them to count, and how was I going to take them out with one knife? I could try a mass exorcism, but they’d surely shut that down before I could even recite half of it.

So I paced, and threw myself at the bars, and raged, almost hoping they’d try to silence me, just to give me something to swing at. 

But, not unlike practiced parents, they ignored me. I deflated with a huff and sank onto the cot, leaning against the cage.

Their lack of attention was  _ weird _ . Demons are dicks. What kind of demons didn’t look for any opportunity to lash out at a human? What demons  _ needed  _ an opportunity?

_ “If you don’t mind my input, I’d guess Sam told them to ignore you unless absolutely necessary.” _

I jumped, banging my head against the bars as it snapped back.

That was not  _ my _ voice in my head. It was not even my mind’s imagining of someone  _ else’s _ voice. It was an actual person speaking in my head.

I heard chortling to my left and turned. The old man was looking at me, eyes scrunched up in amusement. He shrugged apologetically and winked.

I blinked. “What the-”

He shook his head slowly and raised a finger to his lips, glancing toward the lab and the demons within. Then, he tapped his temple.

_ “Think at me. We don’t need them meddling or getting suspicious.” _

I gawked, mouth open. I’d experienced plenty of disturbing, twisted, supernatural,  _ strange  _ things after being inducted into the hunting life, but this was a new level of weird. It was like having a conversation with someone via bluetooth...except  _ in my head _ .

Could he hear everything I was thinking?

_ “More or less,” _ he said. Thought? “ _ It’s an unfortunate byproduct of telepathy. I can usually tune out most of the noise, but it’s more difficult with other psychics. Same plane, or something. I don’t know. That’s why they brought me in here.” _

It suddenly dawned on me that this was the psychic who’d sent the demons after me when I’d first arrived in Atlantic City. Anger flared up again. “ _ Are you the reason I came to New Jersey?” _

I saw him shake his head. “ _ No. I don’t know what brought you here.”  _ His voice...well, his thoughts, took on a sad tone. “ _ But for what it’s worth, I’m sorry I sent them after you. For that I am absolutely responsible.” _

I observed him carefully. He sat cross-legged on his cot, a newspaper spread open in his lap, a pen in his hand, presumably working on a Sodoku or crossword or some other puzzle. He had thinning white hair and thick, rectangular glasses, and he looked like a cross between Gandhi and one of those crotchety but warmhearted World War II veterans. Put a hat on him and he’d almost fit the bill perfectly. 

_ “Actually, Sam asked me the same thing not long after they brought you in.” _

_ “What?” _

He nodded. “ _ Stormed up here demanding to know what I had to do with you. Hot temper, that one.” _

I had no response other than to stare at him and blurt, “Who the hell  _ are _ you?” A demon crossing the room turned and looked between us, barked a harsh, “Shaddup!” and kept walking. The man tapped his finger to his temple again.

_ “My name is Brian,” _ he said. “ _ I’ve been here about ten months, and it’s my job to locate other psychics and alert the demons so they can round them up for their little operation.” _

_ “Why?”  _ I demanded, sitting up a little straighter. “ _ Why do you do it?” _

He shrugged. “ _ I deliver, I can sit here relatively comfortably and they leave me alone. I don’t, it’s shackles, no food, torture. And I’m too old and too tired to play the ‘moral superiority’ card. It’s survival.”  _ He paused. A thousand curses and incoherent wrathful thoughts flashed across my mind. “ _ Look,”  _ he began again, “ _ I don’t blame you. I’m a dick. But it’s lonely in here, and if we’re both stuck here, we might as well keep each other company.” _

_ “I don’t keep company with people like you,” _ I thought as spitefully as I could. “ _ Stay out of my head and leave me alone.” _

I turned away from him, and there was no response in my head. From the corner of my eye, I saw him shift and refocus on the newspaper. 

* * *

 

That afternoon, Sam showed up. 

He walked through the door with Garrett, leaning slightly as the demon rattled off updates, and didn’t even spare a passing glance in my direction. 

I didn’t want to see him, and yet I couldn’t help but watch him. I was boiling. Any slight, small, miniscule trace of the pain I’d felt the days before was trampled out by a white-hot rage. My hands shook. It was all I could do to keep from lunging against the door.

Sam and Garrett passed into the lab where they stopped and spoke to a demon possessing an African American woman. She wore a white lab coat and her hair sprung out in tight ringlets from her head, and behind her goggles she looked every bit like a legitimate, natural human scientist. She must have been awake, I realized. Most of them had to be; what did demons know about genetics? They were riding biologists and hematologists and geneticists and those people were wide awake because the demons needed them to do the work.

I felt sick. I felt enraged.

She pointed in my direction and then picked up a clipboard, held it out to Sam and tapped on it with her pen. I couldn’t hear what she was saying from behind the plexiglass, and I’d never been good at lip reading, but I imagined it had something to do with the blood they’d taken from me the first morning I’d arrived. 

Sam nodded at whatever she said, jerked his thumb over his shoulder at me, and then pointed at something on one of the lab tables. She nodded, mouthed what looked like an “of course,” and picked up a syringe from the table.

Sam rolled up his sleeve and held out his arm. She placed the tip of the needle just near his elbow and drew back, the syringe turning red as it filled with his blood. 

Sam tied a bandage around his arm and rolled down his sleeves, then waved over another demon, one who resembled a broad-shouldered rugby player (complete with lumpy ears and crooked nose)  and together the four of them left the lab and approached the cage. 

Sam stopped a few feet from the cage and crossed his arms, a smirk playing on his lips. “Comfortable?” he quipped.

I didn’t respond, just glowered at him from the cot as the other three stepped up to the door and Garrett took out a ring of keys, unlocked the padlock and swung open the door. The three of them stepped in and came toward me. 

I stood and backed as far away from them as I could. I thought of the knife, forced myself not to look at or move toward it. I wanted it. I wanted to fight, wanted to hurt them, but I couldn’t lose the weapon, not yet.

“Don’t make this harder on yourself,” Jordon warned. “We just need to give you a little of Sam’s blood to get you working again. We’re lucky you have a compatible blood type.” The three of them moved closer. My eyes darted to the open door.

“Don’t even think about it,” Sam said tightly. “I’m right here.”

Garrett and Rugby took their chance and lunged, each grabbing me by an arm and a hip before I could so much as throw a punch, completely immobilizing me against the cage wall. 

I tried to buck them off, but it wasn’t happening. Jordon approached with the needle. “Hold still,” she ordered, and I tensed as she plunged the needle into my arm and pressed down on the syringe, injecting Sam’s blood into my vein. 

She pulled it out and re-tied the bandage that had been covering my arm from the last time and then stepped back. The demons holding me shoved me roughly to the floor, and the three of them backed out of the cage, shut the door and slammed the lock into place. 

Rugby returned to the lab. Garrett, Jordon, and Sam stood a few feet away for a few moments, conferring about me, presumably. I got to my feet and glared at them, my heart racing, hands clenched into fists at my side. If I’d tried, I probably could have heard what they were saying, but the blood rushing in my ears drowned out everything and my only thought was absolute destruction.

After a few minutes, Jordon and Garrett dispersed, and Sam once again stepped toward me. He was so close I could have hit him, I thought.

“So,” he said. “Here’s the thought, if you’re curious: my blood might jumpstart your abilities again. Now that they have more of yours, they can play around with it, see what they can do. But what we  _ really _ need,” he took a step closer, wrapped one of his hands around a bar, “is for you to find the Horn. Shouldn’t be hard, right?”

I clenched my jaw and swallowed back fear and rage and any words I wanted to utter. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction to speaking. I couldn’t. 

He chuckled. “Alright. I’ll leave you alone. You’ll see more of me soon.” He turned away and took a few steps, then looked over his shoulder. “By the way: you’re cute when you’re angry.” He kept walking.

I snapped. Threw myself against the bars of the cage and practically roared my anger. “YOU SON OF A BITCH!” I shouted. “I don’t know what the FUCK happened to you or WHAT the fuck you are but I swear to God, Sam, when I get out of here--”

He turned back to me, an eyebrow raised, his eyes shining. “You’ll what?” he asked, breath coming out in a laugh. He raised his hands out to his sides, shrugging his shoulders in curiosity. “Kill me? Torture me?” He snorted. “Keep telling yourself that. We both know that even if you  _ could _ get out, you don’t have it in you. Because as angry as you are right now...you know it’s still me. And you love me,  _ right _ ?” He grinned a sadistic, teasing, sickly smile before spinning on his heel. He left, waving over his shoulder at me, and I slammed myself against the cage and bellowed obscenities and wordless fury until I was hoarse. 

* * *

 

What felt like hours later, after the lab had shut down for the night and the warehouse was vacant but for a few guards, Brian spoke in my head again. “ _ So.  _ He’s _ the one.” _

I stared up at the endless ceiling. Too exhausted to fight it, I reluctantly took the bait.  _ “He’s the one what? What the fuck does that mean?” _

He took a minute to respond, long enough that I was growing irritated.  _ “Empaths are not the most powerful psychics by any measure, but they  _ are  _ one of the rarest. Psychic abilities are usually passed genetically, or by an uncommon mutation, and sometimes through blood or sex. They  _ only  _ manifest as empathic  when they’re passed from one psychic to another through the latter.” _

This wasn’t news to me.  _ “So yeah, Sam gave those to me, I know that. So what?” _

_ “So you had to have been very close once.” _

I wanted to shut him down. I didn’t want to think about  _ once. _ But I was curious. When I’d first talked to Pamela about my abilities years ago, she’d explained what they were, who they had to have come from, but her knowledge didn’t extend beyond that.

_ “What makes you say that?” _

I heard him chuckle slightly in my head, the kind of amused, almost condescending laugh of grandparents.  _ “A lot of variables determine which ability manifests,”  _ he explained.  _ “Empathy requires a powerful emotional connection. As far as I know, there has to be an emotional strain, or need, as well. People have theorized that it only works with soulmates, maybe. If you believe that shit.” _

A stone had settled on my chest, cold and heavy. I didn’t believe “that shit”, but damn if it didn’t still hurt to think about how it had been before, how  _ we _ had been, when those abilities were still fresh. That had been before everything had gone wrong: before we’d lost Dean, before Ruby, before Lucifer...and even through all of that, the good and the bad, there’d been  _ something _ . Hell, I’d take those four tumultuous months when Sam grieved for Dean with Ruby over the nothingness I felt now, just to know that he was Sam, that he was human.

_ “Oh he’s definitely human. A little...different, but human. Not a demon, at least.” _

I rolled on my side to stare in Brian’s direction. I could barely make out his silhouette in the darkness. Human. I felt some hope.  _ “What do you mean, ‘different’?” _

_ “I don’t know,”  _ he admitted.  _ “He’s not a demon, at least. I can’t read demons. I don’t know why. But I can read Sam. I’ve been inside his head, and it’s not...it’s not normal. It isn’t a typical human mind. It’s almost…” _

_ “Sociopathic?”  _ I offered.

_ “Possibly. Cold. Calculating. It’s almost as though he’s entirely left-brained.I don’t know. You tell me, empath. Does he feel guilt for what he’s doing to you? Does he… ‘emote’? ” _

_ “I don’t know,”  _ I admitted.  _ “I can’t feel him, or anyone, at all.” _

He grew uncharacteristically silent for a long time.

_ “Brian?” _

_ “Sorry. That’s just...strange. I’ve heard of abilities going dormant, but an empath unable to read her source? Hard to swallow.” _

_ “Really?”  _ For some reason, that admission filled me with fear.

_ “Let me put it this way. If you were an empath who came to me and said, ‘Brian, my powers stopped working. How do I get them to work again?” my advice would be to find your source--you know, whomever gave them to you--and stay close to him. So the fact that you can read nothing from him is...strange. But there’s something strange about him in general. About this whole thing, really.”  _ I could practically hear the shrug in his voice. 

I felt like we were spinning in circles, and truthfully I could think of a half dozen reasons why I couldn’t feel Sam.  _ “What if the source had died and come back to life?” _

Another long pause followed that question, not surprisingly.  _ “Well. That I don’t know.” _

I was relieved that he didn’t ask me to elaborate. I didn’t have the mental energy for that conversation. Instead, I changed tracks.  _ “How do you know all of this stuff, anyway?” _

_ “Oh, I’m old. And curious. I was born telepathic and wanted to learn all I could. So I read, and I talked to people, and I traveled all over the world to read and talk to more people and put as much together as I could. Fascinating things, psychics.” _

_ “Can they really use me to find what they’re looking for?” _

_ “Hell if I know,”  _ he said flippantly.  _ “I’m not even 100% sure what they’re doing. Can they use you as a bloodhound? I guess it’s possible, but I’ve never heard of it. As far as shooting you up with Sam’s blood...that’s plain stupid. You already have it in you. What’s that going to do?” _

_ “Do you know what  _ will _ get them to work?” _

_ “I told you what I’d normally say. I don’t know. Find someone else you’re close to, that they usually work with, I guess. You just need vicinity. Except not now, obviously.”  _ I heard him shifting around on his cot.  _ “I’m going to sleep. Ask me more tomorrow if you have to, but I’m tired.” _

The noise in my head quieted, leaving me in blissful silence. Find someone else they worked with. There were many people they worked with; relatives and close friends came easily, though those had been few and far between the last few years. I could read just about anyone, even strangers, with enough concentration, and situations where a lot of emotion ran wild--like sporting events, concerts, riots--usually left me a little overloaded. But the only other person besides Sam I had ever consistently and naturally been able to get a read on was Dean, even if his emotions were muted and washed-out compared to his brother’s.

My heart started pounding. What if they found out? What if the demons put together what I’d just realized: that Dean was the next in line, the next closest match, the next best chance at firing up my abilities and finding the Horn?

It couldn’t happen. As much as I’d kill to have Dean show up, guns blazing, and save the day, bust me out of this shithole and bring his brother back to his senses, now even more than ever he could not be involved. Not because Sam demanded it. Because if Dean showed up now it’d be too late; he’d be in the demons’ hands, and the Braedens would likely be dead. 

No. That couldn’t happen. 

I packed those thoughts away. I didn’t need to feel anyone else; as much as I missed those abilities, it was probably better without them. 

But I couldn’t deny that at this point, I needed a miracle if I hoped to get out. Dean was oblivious to everything. Even on the off chance he tried to contact me, my lack of response wouldn’t be surprising or cause for alarm. There wasn’t a single hunter who knew where I was, and that was my rookie mistake. I  _ should _ have sent a message to him and Bobby that I was stateside  _ just in case.  _

But how could I have predicted it? My best chance now was to one, find a way out myself, or two, hope some random hunter got wind of what was happening and conveniently showed up.

Right.

Maybe there was another way.

I stared up toward the one window, a high, narrow rectangle on the far side of the room from me. I’d always felt stupid doing this, but it had worked for us in the past, hadn’t it?

“Hey, uh, Cas?” I whispered, hoping to not alert the guard standing just inside the doorway. “Look. I don’t know what you know, or what your role is in all this. But, I’m kinda screwed. So if you’re hearing this, and you can...get me out of here. Please.”

Nothing happened, but then again, Castiel worked on his time, never ours.

And then I sat up straight, eyes popped wide.

What if Castiel had planned this? What if he and Sam were working together on this? Surely the angel had to know, right? He’d been so adamant about my staying, playing along...and how could Sam pull one over on him? What if this wasn’t treachery, but all part of the plan? 

My heart raced, hardly daring to hope, and I talked myself down. No, no. That was a fool’s hope. Because even  _ if _ this was part of the plan, Sam was too far gone for it to matter. Plan or not, I was in danger from  _ him. _ He wasn’t the same. The Sam that sacrificed himself to save the world would not have sacrificed me, or anyone, to play along with demons. 

Or would he? Wouldn’t he always do whatever it took? Wasn’t that just how Sam Winchester operated?

I fell back onto the bed with a sigh. It didn’t matter. Either way, I was screwed unless I could find a way out on my own. 

I stayed up most of the night trying to figure out an escape plan and searching for any weakness in the cage. When I did sleep, it was a light, anxious sleep. I needed to find a way out, and soon. 


	10. Chapter 10

Sam showed up the following morning.

He strolled into the cage, locked it behind him and sat on the end of the cot. I stood and crossed to the far wall--which was only a distance of about six feet. I was shaking, either with anger, fear, or a combination of both. I kept my hands clenched at my sides.

“How’re you feeling?” he asked.

I glared and said nothing. He looked a little foolish, sitting on the cot. It was low to the ground, so his knees bent higher than they would in a normal chair, putting them about chest height as he sat there. Somehow, that helped.

“You’re making this harder than it has to be, you know.” He tipped his head back toward Brian. “He’s figured it out. Cooperate, get rewarded, eventually get released. You help us find the Horn, we let you go.”

“And if I don’t?”

He put his hands behind his head and leaned against the cage. “We’ll find a way to convince you to.”

I felt a little twinge of fear in my gut. “Torture?”

He smirked. “So,” he said. “How’re you feeling?”

I swallowed. “Fine.”

A worried expression crossed his face, and he stood up and in a few steps was in front of me. “Hey….what’s wrong?” His entire tone had changed; from his voice to his body language, everything conveyed genuine concern for my well-being. For a brief moment I believed it was really him. 

I blinked. I couldn’t look at him. I turned my face away and closed my eyes.

I felt his fingers gently lift my chin. “Y/N,” he crooned. “Baby…”

I wanted to melt into him and let it be real, but my eyes snapped open and I smacked his hand away from me, then ducked under his arm and darted to the opposite side of the cage.

“Stop it, Sam,” I snapped, but it ended with a quaver. “It isn’t working.”

He started to protest, then nodded. “No, it isn’t.  _ Do  _ you know how I’m feeling?”

I tried. To my credit, I  _ really _ tried to read him. “No. I really don’t.”

He took a step toward me and started ticking off on his fingers. “Frustrated. Irritated. Impatient….disrespected, maybe?” He walked to the door. “Maybe you need another dose. In the meantime...you can do research. I’ll send someone up later.”

He took out a key and unlocked the door, then pushed it open. In a burst of mad energy, I dashed forward, slipping just past the opening before his hand caught my arm and yanked me back.

“Nice try,” he said. He shoved me back into the cage and slammed it shut.

Later, Garrett showed up with a stack of ancient-looking books, an atlas, a legal pad, and a pen. He shoved it through the bars. 

“This is some of what we have on the Horn. Start reading. Take notes. You get an instinct, a gut feeling,  _ whatever _ , write it down, tell us. Use the atlas to map out some possible locations.”

He left. Again, I was surprised by the cordiality, the lack of cruelty, he’d presented.

I ignored the books at first. I wasn’t about to bend to their every will, especially when it required me to help them. But ultimately, curiosity and boredom got the best of me. Besides, research was what I’d done for a living years ago. I stacked them next to the cot and began reading.

At the end of the day, Jordon and Rugby and another demon came in and took another sample. I struggled, but I couldn’t match their combined strength. 

That night, I spent a few minutes talking to Brian and prayed again to Castiel. 

A routine formed. Sam showed up after my dry cereal breakfast. He’d talk, sometimes about himself, sometimes about me, sometimes about the mission, sometimes about topics as arbitrary as the weather. He’d give some small touch. I’d move away from him. He’d try to work his way into my head as if it would in turn get me into his. He’d leave, frustrated. I would research and take half-hearted notes. There wasn’t much, and there wasn’t anything that jumped out to me, but I pretended. Later in the day, after I’d eaten again, Jordon and company would come back and take or give blood. There was a constant gauze bandage tied around my elbow.

Brian and I would talk, swapping stories from our lives mostly. I learned he was an avid reader, so we passed many hours discussing books we’d both read. It was a sweet taste of normalcy and freedom.

After a week of this, Sam started losing patience. His approach changed. He dropped his mostly good-cop routine and became aggressive, charged. He shouted. He threatened. Those gentle, deceptively sweet touches turned into shoves and too-hard squeezes. He was aggravated by my lack of progress psychically and with the research, and it began to show. No matter how much I insisted that I was trying, he grew more and more volatile.

They stopped feeding me, thinking they could starve it out, and Sam disappeared for three days. They stopped taking blood, too, instead increasing what they gave. I stopped fighting them, too tired and hungry to struggle. At night, Brian murmured encouragements in my head, and they twisted into my growing, desperate pleas to Castiel.

On the evening of the third day, Sam returned. 

I was curled on my side on the cot when he came into the cage. “Get up,” he commanded. I blinked up at him but made no indication of moving.

He stormed toward me, gripped my arm and pulled me up as if I weighed nothing. “I said,  _ get up. _ ”

I found my feet and twisted away from him, pushing him back with what little strength I had. “What do you  _ want? _ ”

His face was monstrous. I was almost surprised his eyes weren’t black. He towered over me, made larger by his fury. “I’ve tried playing nice,” he growled. “I tried to go the easy route. But you clearly need more of a push.” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a granola bar. “Hungry?”

My stomach rumbled. My mouth watered. 

Sam picked up  the stack of books and chicken scratched notepad. “This,” he said, “is all you’ve got? Really?” He snatched the atlas and waved it in front of my face. “And nothing in here stands out to you? You found your way here, didn’t you? Give me  _ something!” _

I shook my head. “I’m sorry. Please--”

He slammed the book down on the floor with a SMACK and grabbed the front of my shirt, shoving me against the bars of the cage and lined his face up with mine. “If you don’t cooperate, if you don’t start giving us what we want, we’ll put you on the rack.”

My eyes widened but I couldn’t move. Where would I run?

He leaned close, lips against my ear. I shook, terrified. “I’m not as good as my brother, but I picked up a thing or two downstairs.”

He pulled away to see my reaction, grin snakelike.

My breath had quickened. “I’m trying, Sam,” I pleaded, lips trembling. He looked as though he might hit me. “I swear, I’m trying. I don’t know what to do, I--”

“She needs calm.”

Sam paused, turned to his right. It was Brian. He’d walked to the end of his cage and was staring at us both. “You’re locking her up. It’s never going to work until she feels safe with you.”

Sam let me go and I slid to the floor. I thought Sam would snap and whirl on Brian. He certainly straightened, shoulders tense, and glared at the psychic. Then he said, “What else do you know?”

Brian didn’t miss a beat. He pointed a bony finger at Sam. “You’re the key, because you made her. You have to unlock it together and use it together. But there has to be intimacy, and trust, for that to happen.” He said this all matter of factly, and then paused, thoughtful. “Though how you’re going to create  _ that _ after this trainwreck is beyond me.”

Sam looked back at me, and for a moment it was like he was registering me for the first time, crumpled on the floor, weak and dirty and tear-streaked, and I caught a glimmer of humanity, a streak of hope. His eyes might have softened. I thought his hand twitched as if to reach for me. 

“He’s right,” I managed. “I’ve felt twinges when we were close. After I stitched you up a few weeks ago, and that night after we fought the Jersey Devil. Not much, but something was there.” Was it true? Or had it been wishful thinking in those moments? Or was I just desperate now?

He raised his eyebrows and again it was like I saw through whatever cruelty he was wearing and glimpsed  _ him. _ As though this new information jolted him out of this form and back into another. He shifted, shoulders relaxing somewhat.

“Alright,” he said, and took a step back. “Maybe Brian’s right, and this isn’t working. Maybe I’ll try something else tomorrow.”

He left the cage without another word, double-checked the lock, and went to confer with Judith just beyond the cage.

_ “Thank you,”  _ I thought at Brian.

He didn’t respond right away. He was still standing at the edge of his cage, looking over at Sam.  _ “It’s getting dangerous for you, but he realizes his approach is failing. I don’t know what will happen when mine does, too.” _

I couldn’t think about that. It was one day at a time, one torturous session with Sam at a time, one blood transfusion at a time. I knew I was breaking. I just didn’t know if they’d let me completely shatter, or try to keep me together until they’d gotten what they wanted, or as close as they could. I didn’t know if I could last even in they wanted me to.

Sam had threatened torture--real, on the rack, bloody, slice-and-dice torture. That horrified me, but what he failed to realize was that the mental strain of seeing the face of the man I’d loved turned into something so inhuman was worse than any physical torture he could throw at me. Each day Sam was farther from what I knew, and it grew harder and harder to see him as the man I’d believed him to be. The meaner, the darker he got, the more I wanted the old Sam, the good, safe Sam to come to my rescue, as if he were another person still out there somewhere, looking for me, even as it was beginning to sink in that he was gone for good. 

_ “Hang in there,” _ Brian said. 

Then, then next morning, when I opened my eyes and looked across the cage, there was a tray of food.

It wasn’t just dry cereal and water this time, either. It was that, plus a plate of fruit: apple slices and banana and grapes. There was a slice of bread, a hard-boiled egg, and a school lunch sized carton of chocolate milk.

I didn’t hesitate, just flung myself across the floor and inhaled it, barely chewing, hardly tasting. It was gone within minutes, and I sat back, leaning on my hands, and breathed. I was so thankful Brian had stepped in yesterday.

I yawned and stood up, stretching. I went over to the cot and laid down. The books were still scattered on the floor where Sam had thrown them, and I didn’t have the energy or state of mine to go back to them just yet. My blood sugar now returning to normal, I felt especially lethargic. As my eyes slid shut it occurred to me that, most likely, I’d just been drugged, but I was warm and full and sleepy and let that thought slip right away.

* * *

 

I was in the backseat of the Impala. Sam and Dean were up front, one of Dean’s cassettes playing for the hundredth time as he drove down the highway. He and Sam were debating whether, of all things, anything besides butter and salt should go on popcorn. How they’d reached this topic was beyond me, but it was the kind of playful, brotherly banter they rarely had time or energy or joy enough to partake in, and it warmed me.

I leaned forward, resting my elbows on the front seat and placing my head between theirs. “You’re both wrong,” I said. “Because why have popcorn, when you can have kettle corn? Kettle corn is king.”

Dean smacked his hand on the steering wheel. “No, no way. You do  _ not _ put sugar on popcorn!” Dean argued vehemently. “Hell, you’re as bad as he is. Where do you find these chicks, Sammy?”

“It’s not our fault your taste sucks.” Sam grinned and winked at me. I felt his mirth roll off of him and meld with my own. I laughed. These were the moments the road was worth it, these warm, light snippets of normalcy.

Then, suddenly, we were in Sam’s cabin in New Jersey, but it was warmer, brighter, more decorated and full of furniture and knick-knacks. Sam and I were on the couch. He sat on the end, a bottle of beer in one hand, and I was stretched out opposite him, my feet in his lap. A John Wayne film was playing on the TV. 

Dean walked into the room from the bathroom and grabbed a beer from the fridge, then came and sat in the overstuffed armchair, kicking his feet up on the coffee table as he took a long drag from the bottle.

“I’ve gotta tell you, Sammy, you’ve really done well for yourself here.” He cast his gaze around the room and nodded in appreciation. “Really. I’m happy for you guys. This is great.” His joy was genuine, and I felt his pride, too.

I thought it was strange that we were there of all places, but what really mattered was that the three of us were together and that for the time being, no evil was lurking just beyond the horizon of comfort. These moments were few and far between, but no one was hurting or dreading the apocalypse, no heavy decisions were weighing anyone down.

I looked over at Sam and the room and Dean vanished, and we were lying together on a bed, arms and legs entangled, Sam’s chin on the top of my head and my nose brushing the collar of his shirt and I sighed, safe and happy.

* * *

 

I woke up slowly, fighting awareness, trying to desperately cling to the tendrils of that dream, attempting to bury back into the pillow.  _ Please, let me sleep. Let me stay. _ I refused to open my eyes, keeping them screwed shut against reality.

I was straddling the line between awake and asleep, in the fuzzy limbo where dreams and reality merge. I could feel the cot beneath me and that rough blanket above me, but I was still held, still pressed gently against a sleeping body. There was soft fabric beneath my fingers and a reassuring weight on my head. “ _ Sam,”  _ I breathed. I snuggled closer, twisting my fingers into the flannel of his shirt and pressing my nose and lips against his collarbone and just held on, wishing this to last.

He shifted, hands sliding against my back. When I protested, they returned with a reassuring squeeze. “Hey,” he said softly.   
“Hi.”

One hand moved to stroke my hair. “How did you sleep?”

Sleep. Wasn’t I still dreaming? I felt my hold on him slipping and buried my face in his chest. “Good,” I mumbled. “So good.”

Sam placed a kiss on my forehead. “How do you feel?”

“Warm,” I sighed, still focusing on holding on to this as long as possible. “Safe. Happy.”

“Good,” he said. “And how do  _ I  _  feel?”

I smiled. It was a game we used to play often. “You feel--” But I stopped short, confused. “You feel--” There was nothing. This should be easy. I’d never had to try before; his emotions came as naturally and fluidly as my own. But there was only me.  
And then I realized.

My eyes snapped open and I sat up with a jolt. Sam was there, tucked into bed with me, but on the cot, in the cage, in the goddamn warehouse. I scrambled away, falling on my ass in my hurry and tangling in the blanket, and backed myself into the corner.   
He got up slowly, hair tousled, blinking sleep from his eyes. He approached slowly, hand extended in peace. “Hey hey, easy, it’s okay.”

“It’s not okay,” I said, choking around the lump of fearful disappointment in my throat. “This is  _ not  _ okay. You...what did you  _ do _ ?”

“Sedative, and dreamroot,” he explained calmly. “I’m trying to reach you, okay? I don’t want to hurt you anymore. We can fix this.”

I sank to the floor and pulled my knees to my chest, wrapping my arms around them like a shield. I wanted to be angry, but whatever he’d given me combined with the dream was making the affection for him hard to shake. “Not fair, Sam. You can’t mess with me like this.”

“I need your help,” he pleaded. He’d stopped about three feet away and sat down. “If I don’t find the Horn, I don’t know what they’ll do to you  _ or  _ to me. You know the plan, Y/N. You’re part of it.”

My wheels were spinning. I was having trouble distinguishing which plan he was talking about, which side he was referencing, whose side he was on. I pressed my palms against my eyes and shook my head violently. “STOP!” I shouted at him. “Either let me go or leave me alone, Sam, but I  _ cannot _ help you!”

“Y/N, please.”

I turned my back to him, still curled in on myself, every muscle in my body tightened and defensive. I heard him move behind me. He placed a hand between my shoulder blades. “I love you,” he said. “I don’t want to hurt you anymore. Help me.”

“I can’t Sam. No matter how much you want it to happen, I just can’t.”

I shut him out. Nothing he said was real no matter how real it felt. It was the sedative, and the dreamroot, and the blanket of sleep.

He sighed, gave my shoulder a squeeze, and stood up. I heard him open and shut the door, heard the snap of the padlock. It was dark in the warehouse, I realized, and I’d slept through the day and into night, and still it wasn’t long enough. I made my way back to the cot and slept. This time, my dreams were empty.

 

* * *

 

Sam sat in the small office on the main floor of the warehouse, his elbows propped on the desk and his hands fisted in his hair. His head was pounding dull thuds behind his eyelids, and he was battling the urge to either unleash his frustration on the cadre of demons in the yard, or to drown himself in drink or willing flesh at one of the local bars. 

He turned to neither; a tap on the door announced Judith, and she shut it behind her and perched on the edge of the desk in front of him, just slightly leaning her body toward him. He lifted his head and blinked at her, irritated. She was always  _ perching, _ always flitting around him like a damn hummingbird, and yet she had a way of drawing people to her like a raven. 

“What’s wrong?” Rather than concern, her voice carried the tone of a parent who’s heard one too many of her pre-teen’s melodramas to take them seriously.

“I am,” he admitted. “It isn’t working. She isn’t receptive, and I can’t work my way into her while she’s caged.”

Judith raised her eyebrows and offered a disinterested shrug. “Well,” she quipped, “if we can’t use her, we can throw her downstairs with the others and pump her until she’s dry. Her blood is still good for something.”

Sam blinked, leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “But we need an empath.”

“We’ll find another. They’re rare, Sam, not extinct.”

He shook his head. “But she’s  _ mine.  _ You’re the one who made such an issue out of that, remember?”

Judith picked up a pen and clicked it, then began tracing slow, looping circles on a pad of paper on the desk. “It’s been two weeks. On the one hand, that isn’t too long. She’s definitely an asset, if she--or her abilities--cooperate. On the other hand...we’re pouring a lot of our resources, you included, into what might be a dead end. We could find an empath that actually works, and manipulate your blood with your girl’s in the lab.”

The mixture of denial and relief that flooded Sam sent another pang through his skull. He didn’t want to let this one go. At the same time, he couldn’t deny that things had gone farther than he’d intended. “You want me to give up?”

Judith shook her head, tossed the pen down and angled herself on the desk so she was facing him directly. “I think you have one more option,” she said. A smirk was creeping onto her lips and her eyes had darkened. “The psychic said you needed intimacy. Before you give up on her… try some  _ real  _ intimacy.” She dipped her head and gazed up at him through thick lashes. 

Sam’s mouth went dry, but he raised his eyebrows and tilted his head. “Oh?”

Judith swung her legs around and pushed herself across the desk so she was perched on Sam’s side, her legs dangling between his thighs. She pressed her hands against the edge and leaned forward so her face stopped mere inches from his. “You know what made her an empath in the first place...who says you can’t force it back the same way, hmm?” She stroked her hand down his face and cupped his chin.

He swatted her hand away and closed the space between them with a forceful kiss, one hand squeezing her waist and the other fisting in her hair. It was the only way he could have kept his expression from betraying his thoughts. It couldn’t be done; Sam knew full well how far off the reservation he’d gone the past year, but he had enough humanity left to keep him from truly crossing the line into evil. He couldn’t do it, and it wouldn’t work if he could. If Y/N’s powers could be awakened with sex, it would have happened that first night she’d come back. He knew that, and he knew that he--and Y/N, too--was running out of time.

But Judith couldn’t know, couldn’t see through the cracks. He knew she was Markus’s eyes and reported everything to him, and that Markus was close to whoever it was that pulled Sam out of the cage; he was sure that if he failed, they’d throw him right back in. So he moved both hands behind her thighs and lifted, pushing her back onto the desk, his lips on her throat and his hands reaching for his belt.

 

Later, he straightened his shirt and put on his coat. “Tomorrow night,” he said, as she gathered her hair into a rubber band. “No drugs tomorrow. I need her coherent.”

She grinned devilishly and nodded. After he’d sent her on her way, he double-checked his keyring, turning the small silver one that unlocked the cage over and over in his hand. Then he locked the office, got in his car, and drove home. Back at the cabin, he summoned Castiel. By then, he had a new plan.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies for the delay! June was a busy month. I'll post at least one more before I leave town in a couple of week.

I was blissfully alone the entirety of the following day, and my meals were delivered on schedule and had gone back to the bland, dry morsels from before. At first I was afraid to touch them, completely unwilling to be thrown into another drug-induced horror, but hunger and exhaustion won out, and they were clean.

Brian stayed silent, and I didn’t try to engage him. I sat on the cot most of the day, licking my wounds, trying not to relive the sweetness of the dream, no matter how twisted it had really been.

I drifted off to sleep before the lab had shut down for the night, oddly comforted by the background noise and the light.

It wasn’t long before I was awakened by a shifting beside me and a heavy weight pressing against me. I opened my eyes to darkness, followed by panic as I registered someone over me. 

I kicked, bucked, thrashed, but my arms were pinned beneath me and a leg was thrown over mine, locking them down. I was practically smothered, but still I twisted, tried to shift my hips, anything to make space.

I knew it was Sam before I could see him, before he spoke. I wasn’t a stranger to him; I knew his touch, his size, his scent. “Sssh, sssh,” he whispered, and a hand was over my mouth. I tried to bite, but he cupped it just enough.

As my eyes adjusted I took in his face, inches from mine as most of his weight was keeping me from rolling away. I glanced left and saw that Brian was awake, barely planted on the edge of his cot. The room was mostly empty; three demons were gathered by the stairwell door, but I couldn’t make out which ones.

“Please,” I breathed through his fingers, though what I pleaded for I didn’t know.

He slid his hand from my lips to cup the side of my face and leaned forward and pressed a kiss to my temple. It was loving and tender and I did my best to shrink away from where it seemed to burn my skin.

“You know, I didn’t mean to keep you this long,” he said. He slid his hand from my head down my side, resting finally on my hip. “I thought we’d figure this out sooner, and move on. At this point, you’re almost as good to us dead.” He smirked. “But I talked to Judith, and she suggested I try one more thing.”

He gave my hip a tight squeeze and then moved his hand to the hem of my shirt. Panic rose like bile in my throat and I shifted my weight, somewhat freeing a knee so I could drive it between us. “ _ No, _ Sam!” I grunted, doing my best to push him away.

“No? Are you sure?” He paused his movements to look me directly in the eye. “Because I remember you liking this back in Poughkeepsie.”

I froze, gaped, my mouth parting slightly. I had to have heard him wrong. But there was no lie in his eyes; in fact, now  _ he  _ was pleading, silently, his eyes locked with mine.

I felt his fingers slip under my shirt and slide up my stomach, and I couldn’t help flinching away from him. He relaxed his hold on me slightly as his hand grazed the front of my bra, his fingers tripping over the fabric but not touching skin until I felt him slip something small and smooth inside the cup. He lingered there a moment longer, glancing toward the demons by the door, before withdrawing his arm and settling his hand on my head instead.

I opened my mouth to speak, to question, but he placed a finger over my lips and just slightly turned his head to the right, toward Brian. I watched him, heart pounding, simultaneously terrified to move and wanting to bolt. Brian straightened, shaking himself, and then I heard his voice in my head.

_ “I don’t know what’s going on here, but he says you have to get out. There’s a car in a clearing about a mile down the road. He says he knows you have the knife, and to use it if you have to, but be sneaky. There are five demons here at night. Drive into town and find him.” _

I glanced at Brian, then back at Sam, and something internally unclenched. His face was hardened and determined, but his eyes bore the soft, imploring expression that had always endeared people to him. I swallowed, unsure.

“I’ll give you one more night,” he said, his voice wearing the malicious cadence I’d become familiar with. “One more night until I take what’s mine. But you try to pull anything, or fight back, and it won’t just be you suffering. Remember your old friend, Jim Rockford? He’ll pay, too.”

He tilted his head forward and kissed me on the mouth; it wasn’t real, more of a rough stage-kiss, meant for show more than affection, and he pushed off of me quickly, releasing his python-grip and stepping away from the bed. He made a show of kicking the leg of the cot and storming to the door, slamming it shut behind him and slapping the lock into place. 

“One more night,” he growled, and headed for the door, taking two of the demons with him as he left.

I didn’t move for several minutes. My brain felt like it was processing through cement. What had just happened?

I rolled on my side so my back was to the stairwell door and the demon who stood guard, and slipped my hand under my shirt and into my bra and pulled out the object and brought it close to my face.

It was a key. 

“Holy shit.” I made a fist around it.

_ “Brian….can I trust him?” _

_ “I don’t think you have a choice. Go.” _

_ “What about the guard?” _

_ “He said you have a knife…? But knives don’t kill demons.” _

_ “It’s a special knife.”  _ I took a minute to think.  _ “If I break out of here, he’ll call the rest of them, and I’m screwed. Because of course Sam couldn’t have taken care of the guards…” _

_ “He has to make it look like you did it on your own. You could’ve taken the key off of him yourself while he was in here. I don’t know what his angle is, but he’s trying to keep his hands clean. You’d better be careful. You have to trust him, but not too much.” _

I drummed my fingers on the edge of the cot, trying to figure out what to do. My heart was galloping out of my chest. Hope springs eternal.  _ “Maybe I can lure him over here, get him through the bars.” _

_ “You can’t,”  _ Brian said, matter of factly. _ “He won’t come near you.” _

_ “How do you know? I could taunt him.” _

_ “You could, but it won’t work. Haven’t you noticed that no matter what you do, unless Sam directly orders them to interact with you, they ignore you?” _

_ “But he isn’t here now, what does he have to fear?” _

_ “You’re not understanding me,” _ Brian said, sounding annoyed. _ “It’s like they don’t even see you, like their eyes just pass right over you. They obviously know you’re in there, but you might as well be a goldfish. It’s like you have some saving grace against them.” _

I blinked. Grace. I remembered, suddenly, powerfully, Castiel placing his hands on me, healing the wounds from the Jersey Devil, how his gaze had lingered just a hair too long, the unspoken conversation that had passed between him and Sam that morning.

They couldn’t have planned it; they wouldn’t have locked me in here. Sam’s malice had been too real to be an act. And yet, I clutched his key in my hand. 

Brian interrupted my thoughts.  _ “I have an idea. _ ”

 

I sat on the edge of the cot, the key in my left hand and the knife in my right, hidden against my thigh, as Brian walked to the side of his cage closest to me and let out a long, high whistle.

The demon guard’s head shot up, and he snapped a sharp, “Shut up!” but otherwise did nothing.

Brian cleared his throat. “Hey!” he barked. “Get your ass over here, fucker, I need something!”

I couldn’t read his expression in the dim light, but the demon’s body definitely stiffened. He began walking toward us. “What did you just say to me?”

“I said, get your ass over here.” Brian’s voice was gruff, so different from how he usually sounded in my head. He added again, almost as an afterthought: “Fucker.”

A chill ran through me as the demon reached my cage, but just as Brian predicted, he didn’t so much as glance in my direction. A part of me wondered if he’d even react when I opened the door; I imagined he would in that case, but his indifference now was almost eerie.

He passed me by and then strode in between our cages to stand in front of Brian. There was about a five-foot gap between each cage, and his back was to me, just as planned. I tried to breathe slowly and tightened my grip on the knife.

“What do you want?” the demon snapped.

“First of all,” Brian began, and started ticking off items on his fingers. I barely listened to him as I stood and moved silently toward the door. I’d removed my boots and socks, and the concrete was chilly on my feet, but it afforded me a greater degree of stealth. I moved to the cage door on my toes and reached through to grab the lock, shifting the key into my right hand with the knife. As I moved to unlock it, Brian raised his voice slightly to cover any noise.

For a brief second I feared it wouldn’t work, but the key turned with ease and the lock clicked open. I put the key in my pocket and gingerly set the lock on the ground. 

I tried to remember if the door would squeal on its hinges, but couldn’t call a memory of it to mind. I pushed just slightly and it moved. I glanced over my shoulder at Brian, and he maintained his louder volume, careful to not get loud enough to alarm any of the demons downstairs.

“You fucking demons think you can keep me in here without fresh air and I am SICK of it! I refuse to bring in another damn psychic until--”

I pushed the door open, covered by his tantrum, and turned just in time to see the demon thrust his arm through the cage and grab Brian by the throat, uttering a venomous threat to his life. That was my unexpected cue. I turned the knife so it was pointed down and darted between the cages, reached the demon and plunged the knife into his kidneys. His back arched and he wailed, but he flashed orange and yellow and went limp. I pulled the knife out and wiped the blood on his pants.

“Well. That was easy,” Brian coughed, rubbing his neck.

“You okay?”

He nodded. “Still got the key?”

I walked around to the front and tried to fit it in the lock. It slid in, but wouldn’t turn. “It’s a different lock.”

“Check the guard?”

I did, digging in every pocket he had. There was nothing. I looked at Brian, defeated. “Brian--”

He held up a hand and offered a grim smile. “Get out of here. Come back with the infantry, will you? And an arsenal.”

“I’ll bring the best hunters I can find,” I promised.

“I know. Go. I’ll be fine.”

I went back to my cage and grabbed my books, shoving my socks into the toes and tieing the laces together. I hung them over my neck and put on my coat before stepping back out.

“See ya, Brian.”

He saluted. I turned and made for the door, opened it, and listened for anything in the stairwell. It was silent, and completely dark . I felt my way along the wall, sliding my toes forward until I found each step as I descended. I paused when I reached the landing. There was no door at the foot of the stairs, and a dim light and low voices emitted from the room beyond. I hugged the wall as I inched forward.

The room was as I’d remembered it: open and dotted with furniture. In the middle of the wall perpendicular to me were the maps and paper-littered wooden table. Two demons were gathered around it, conversing softly. Only one of their backs was to me. 

If this were a videogame, I could have hit the crouch option and slipped along the wall to my right, most likely moving completely undetected the entire time. The chances of that working out for me in reality were slim to none. Unfortunately, I didn’t think I could take on the two of them at this point, weakened as I was from two weeks in captivity with limited calories and regular blood loss. 

But there  _ was _ the door to the basement, where they stored their other captives, where I’d started out. It was on the same wall as the table, just a few feet from them. I wondered if I could distract them.

I dug in my coat pockets. Sam had been sure to take my phone and wallet when he’d caught me, but there was always a chance...yes! My fingers closed around a quarter. Perfect.

I laid down on the floor as close to the wall and away from the light as I could, stuck out my arm, and took aim. The quarter went flying through the air and collided with the  _ ping! _ against the door, hitting it flat and falling onto the ground rather than bouncing. That was lucky. 

The demons both jerked around toward the door. I jumped to my feet as quickly and quietly as I could, waiting.

“You hear that?” one said.

The other nodded, but shrugged. “Bruce is down there...could be him. Or a rat.”

Sam had told Brian there were five demons. The guard upstairs was dead. Two were in here, and one was downstairs. That left one unaccounted for. Either Sam was wrong, or there was one in the yard. 

I didn’t know if they’d take the bait, but at least they were angled mostly away from me. I stepped out, keeping close to the wall, and inched toward a futon that stood several feet from the wall.

“I’ll see if he’s having any problems with them. You know how they can get…” The first demon moved toward the door. I crouched and scurried behind the futon and waited, listening. 

“Don’t be a pussy,” the other said. I heard papers shifting and peeked under the futon. His toes were pointed away from me. The other was facing the door. I looked to the right. It was probably fifty feet to the door and there was an armchair just over halfway. I took a breath, checked their feet, and moved.

“Hey….Derrick? There’s a quarter over here.”

In the shadow of the chair, I froze.

“So?”

I heard a  _ ping! _ as the quarter hit the door. There was a moment of silence, then, “Search the room! I’ll check upstairs.”

Running footsteps approached the door and hit the stairs. The remaining demon rushed somewhere to my left, and I heard a crash as he flung an ottoman across the room. 

I lifted my boots from my shoulders and set them on the ground moments before the armchair was thrown away from me. I sprung up as the demon rushed me with a snarl, and as he closed the distance and thrust the knife between us just seconds before he tackled me. I let his momentum do the work for me. He crashed into me and I fell backward as he glowed orange and died, and squirmed my way out from under him, pulled out the knife, and grabbed my boots. I sprinted to the door, reaching it just as I heard the other demon come barrelling down the stairs. I didn’t bother looking, just wrenched the door open and burst into the frigid winter air, hitting the ground running and not stopping until I’d cleared the gate and found cover in the woods. I’d never moved so fast in my life. 

I could hear him shouting for backup---presumably the fifth and final demon--and I started to panic. They could outrun me, and my energy was burning low. Crouched in the bushes, I looked up, listening to the approaching footsteps.

It might work.

Not wanting to waste time, I twisted the laces of my boots so they were wound tightly together, and then I chucked them as hard as I could to my left and away from the road. They landed with a crash in some underbrush a decent distance away.

“Over there!” I heard them change course, and I leapt to my feet and jumped, grabbing a low-hanging branch of a pine tree and pulling myself up, climbing as high as the branches could support me, and hugged the trunk, staying as still and small as I could.

My feet were freezing. I listened to the sounds of the demons searching through the underbrush until they mostly faded, and then I waited some more. After several minutes, I heard their voices somewhere below me, off to the right. 

“I’ll make the call to the boss,” one of them said. “You raise the alarm, get everyone out here. We’ll get the hounds on her if we have to.”

Their footsteps picked up, and then faded. I waited as long as I could stand it and shimmied down the tree, darted across the road and behind the treeline, and started to run. Sam said there was a car about a mile up the road. A mile had never seemed so far.

Somehow, after ages, my lungs burning, my feet numbed and scratched, my stomach threatening to hurl every meager scrap in it, I found the car parked in a cleared space just off the road. It was a beater of some sort, rusted and clunky, but it was unlocked and the keys were in the ignition. I turned it on and blasted the heat as I pulled onto the road and floored it away from the warehouse.

A few miles of winding road later I hit town, and keeping Jim Rockford in mind I followed it until I found the first motel, pulled off and parked. Sam’s car was in the lot, and I felt a mixture of relief and fear seeing it. I got out, ignoring the sharp burning in my feet as I entered the lobby and hoped no one would say anything.

It was empty but for the desk worker, and I went up and put on the friendliest smile I could muster. She did a double take when she saw me, mouth dropping open slightly. I couldn’t imagine what I bloody, dirty, haggard mess I must’ve been. “How can I--”

“I’m looking for Jim Rockford. He should’ve checked in sometime today.”

She stared at me a second and then nodded, going to her computer. “Yes...room for two. He said you’d be here...do you have any I.D.?”

I blinked at her. Such a mundane, normal request suddenly infuriated me. I bit my lip to keep from shouting at her. “I don’t. Sorry. I’m Y/N. He said you’d be fine giving me the room.”

She kept staring, eyes roving over my face and torso and finally noticing my bloody feet. She cringed back. “Um..yeah, you know what? 109. Here you go.” She slid a keycard across the counter. “Breakfast starts at 7:30 tomorrow.”

I took the key, muttered a hasty thanks and hurried out of the lobby. People will do anything to avoid the uncomfortable, or potentially crazy.

I reached the room within seconds and with shaking hands slid the card into the slot. It lit up green and I turned the handle, pushing the door into the room.

Sam crossed the room in three strides and reached to take my arm, but I placed my fingers on his chest and pushed him back, then sidestepped around him to create space.

“No,” I said. “You keep switching sides. What’s going on?”

He shook his head and breezed past me, moving to the table in the corner. “I thought it was under control, but it got too dangerous. You weren’t doing what they wanted, so I had to pull you out.”

“You planned all of this? And Cas?”

He grabbed a duffel bag--my duffel bag--off of the table and came back to me. “There isn’t time.” He shoved the bag into my arms. “You have to go.”

He wasn’t making any sense. I was rattled; I was afraid of him and wanted to be away from him as soon as possible, but I wanted answers.

“What do you mean, go? Go  _ where _ ? Why?” He’d just broken me out and sent me straight back to him, using the hunter lingo he and his brother had set up, and now he was sending me out again? What was his angle now?

“Because they’re after you!” he shouted. “I got the call after you broke out. They know. They want you. They want both of us.”

He was frazzled, frantic. He might have been afraid. His eyes kept darting to the windows. He shoved a set of keys into my hand. “Take my car. It’ll get you farther. Just drive. Go to Bobby’s if you have to. Tell him whatever you have to.”

I gaped at the keys and then back up at him. I took a step back. I didn’t trust him. “And do what?”

“Lay low. You can still help Cas.”

I swallowed. “And you?”

Headlights danced across the room and he paused, looking at the window, head slightly tilted to one side, and then relaxed as he heard the car drive on. “I’m gonna run in the other direction,” he said. “They need both of us, and they want you, but they figured out what I did, and they’re after my head now.”

I was scared. Scared of him and for him. I’d been here before, had felt the same turbulence when Lucifer had taken him. I couldn’t stand to be near him; I couldn’t stand the thought of losing him again.   
“Sam--”

He placed his hands on my shoulders and turned me around, pushing me toward the door. “GO. It’ll be bad. They can’t take us both. Get to Bobby’s. Don’t look back. Don’t come back.”

His urgency got me, and I wanted to go, if anything just to put miles between me and him and this shitty town where nothing good had happened since I’d showed up. I paused for just a minute in the doorway and turned back to him. He took up so much of the room, always had dwarfed motel rooms, but he wasn’t the steady force I was used to. I’d seen real fear in Sam maybe three times in our time together, and this was one of them. It dissolved my own alarm of him; this was the first time he’d looked real to me, looked truly human to me, since I’d found him.

I squeezed the keys in my fist and adjusted the bag on my shoulders. “Goodbye, Sam.”

He clenched his jaw, nodded, and shut the door. I heard him moving quickly inside, presumably throwing things together.

I hurried to the car, pulled out of the lot, and drove West. 


	12. Chapter 12

I dug in my bag as I sped down the road. It felt like Sam had packed a small arsenal with my few belongings. In one of the outside pockets I found my phone and fished it out, turned it on and went to open the GPS. I balked at the date. It was just after midnight on November 28. I’d been captive two weeks. Not that I would have celebrated, but Thanksgiving had come and gone completely unnoticed. 

The GPS told me it was around a twenty hour drive to Sioux Falls, putting me there around 8 tomorrow night if I went straight through. I couldn’t imagine driving that long without stopping, but fear told me I wouldn’t be able to stop and sleep. 

So I drove, the first hour in a panic, heart in my throat and hands white-knuckled against the wheel, eyes constantly darting to the rearview mirror, expecting at any moment to see black-eyed figures appear in the backseat. I sped, going ten, fifteen over the limit and not caring, just needing to put as much distance behind me as I possibly could. 

I feared for myself, and part of me even feared for Sam. I didn’t know how much time he’d bought me, whether they’d caught up with him, how close behind they were...

My breath hitched on a sob and I pressed the pedal down farther. I’d lost him again. I’d  _ wanted _ to lose him. But there’d been no time for an explanation, and I was left wondering which part of him — the one that threw me to the demons like a sack of meat or the one that enabled my rescue — was the real Sam. It occurred to me that maybe it was both. Maybe Sam didn’t even know.

I swallowed and tightened my grip on the wheel. I couldn’t think about that. He’d gotten me out, hadn’t he? Jeopardized himself and the mission to ensure I was out and safe? That had to speak for something, right? And now he was —

“Y/N.”

I shrieked and jumped, nearly smacking my head on the roof of the car, and swerved dangerously to the left before slamming on the brakes and coming to a dead stop in the middle of the (thankfully empty) highway.

It was Castiel, of course, looking unruffled as usual, sitting in the passenger seat.

A massive breath escaped me as I settled back against the seat and closed my eyes. “Jesus Christ, Cas.”

“I am sorry,” he said. “But you should keep moving. You’re being followed.”

My eyes shot open and I sat bolt upright, instantly realigning the wheel and accelerating up to my previous over-the-limit speed.

I kept my eyes on the road but watched the angel out of my peripheral. He was staring forward, too, unspeaking.

“What’re you doing?” I asked, teeth grit in aggravation.

“Attempting to shield you.”

I didn’t respond, a little surprised, and let him focus for a few minutes before I spoke up again. “Where were you, Cas? I called for you every night.”

“I know. I am...sorry. Their base is warded. I could do nothing.”

He didn’t sound sorry. He sounded rehearsed. Then again, I didn’t know if that meant anything. He was an angel, after all. They didn’t exactly emote.

But I was suddenly angry. “But you planned it. You and Sam. You wouldn’t have come for me anyway, would you?”

“Planned? No.” He shook his head. “But that’s how it happened. When he came to me last night and said the situation had become too dangerous for you, I told him to pull you out.”

“So you’re the one pulling all the strings.”

He tilted his head, unfamiliar with the expression. “I give the orders, yes.”

I chewed on that for a while, unsure how I felt knowing it was Castiel who’d ordered me captured. It painted both him and Sam in a new light, but it didn’t explain or justify Sam’s behavior.

After a long silence, I asked, “Is he human?”

“Yes.”

“But something’s not right with him.”

“No.”

I wasn’t sure if I should be comforted or more concerned.

“And now? Is he safe?”

“He’s heading south. Most of them followed you; he has a decent lead.”

“What will they do if they catch him?”

“I don’t know.”

I had a feeling he did know. I growled, literally  _ growled _ back in my throat in frustration. Castiel was an ally, I knew that, but for such a powerful being his apparent lack of usefulness in a crisis was maddening.

I drove in silence for several minutes, expecting him to flash away again, but he was still there after twenty minutes, and then thirty, and then forty-five, when he finally spoke again.

“I’ve managed to lose them,” he announced somberly, shifting in the seat, turning his neck left and right as if to stretch it. “You should reach Sioux Falls without incident.”

I didn’t respond. My energy was sapped, but my nerves were on overdrive, not allowing me to relax even a moment. Still, Castiel’s presence was, as always, oddly comforting, even in silence.

A thought occurred to me then. “Is it true?”

He cocked his head to one side. “Is what true?”

“The empath thing. Using me to find the Horn.”

He waited. I took my eyes from the road to meet his, and those iridescent blue irises bored into my soul. “It’s true,” he admitted, and then looked away, possibly ashamed. “Only I knew. I thought I could keep that information from the demons and keep the both of you safe.” He paused, shifted again. “I was wrong.”

Even in my anger and irritation, my heart went out to him. I could say many things about Castiel: he was aloof, unfeeling; he was act first, ask questions later, often to a fault; he was unaware of what pertinent information was and he put duty before companionship; but he wasn’t cruel, and he never acted with intent to harm those close to him.

“So what does that mean?” I asked. 

He was solemn, seemingly deflated almost. “They will never stop hunting you,” he said. “You’re hidden from them for now, but they will use Sam to get to you. If they find you, they will use you until they have what they want.”

A shudder ran through my body. My mouth was dry. “Cas, I can’t even use these powers. They’re gone. They don’t  _ work. _ ”

“They’re dormant,” he explained, and I remembered, distantly, having heard that before. Wasn’t that exactly what Ruby had told Sam, just hours before Dean’s time had run out and he’d been dragged to Hell? “But they aren’t gone.”

“If they’re dormant, how did I follow some super powerful psychic impulse to come to New Jersey? They didn’t just wake up and go back to sleep. Not something that strong.”

He looked away and did not respond. The silence stretched into the miles of pavement ahead of us, the air between us suddenly heavy.

“Cas…”

He slowly turned his head to face me, and his eyes were painted with remorse.

Realization slammed into me as if I’d swerved off-road and into the guardrail. I whipped my head to gape at him, my mouth falling open. “It was you.”

He blinked once, slowly, not taking his eyes from mine.

I tore them away, turning back to the road. “Why.” It wasn’t a question. 

“We needed an empath,” he stated flatly. Anticipating my next command, he continued, “We needed one from a strong bloodline. The Winchesters are...the family history is strong. You’re tied to Sam. Your  _ fate  _ is tied with his. We believed that if any beings could find Gabriel’s Horn, it’s the two of you. The demons were right about that much. We had to have you.”

I was fighting back tears of fury and the compelling yet suicidal impulse to murder him. “Get out, Castiel.”

He stared at me, a little sadly I thought, but I refused to acknowledge him. “Very well,” he sighed, and was gone.

Panic rose in my chest again the minute he vanished, and I was overcome with an unyielding desperation and rage. I hadn’t expected that I’d been brought back into this, back to Sam, by chance, but somehow the knowledge that I’d been brought back to be an instrument, a tool, a  _ pawn _ threw me. But why should it? It was the Winchester Way.

_ But I’m not a fucking Winchester. _

Another voice, darker, spoke back:  _ But I did choose one, and then have the audacity, the foolishness to fall in love with one, to join his family, to fight with him, to… _

How long had this been in the cards? The plan? The bloodline went back to Cain and Abel, the angels had once said. John and Mary were  _ destined _ to meet, Dean and Sam were  _ destined _ to be born for Michael and Lucifer.

Was I another chess piece? 

I shook my head hard, as if I could expel the thoughts from my mind. It was too much. It was too big for just me, sitting in a car flying down I-76 in the middle of the night without a soul to talk this out to who could even understand it.

I’d reached Pittsburg. I stopped and dug a pair of socks and tennis shoes out of my bag and got out to fill the tank, pee, and grab a cup of coffee, some beef jerky and Twizzlers. When I pulled out of the lot and looked at the highway signs, I paused.

I could follow I-76 to the Ohio Turnpike and then onto I-80 and continue going Northwest toward Sioux Falls.

Or I could get on I-70, head straight West through Ohio and right up to Indianapolis. From there it would be a short drive North to Cicero. To Dean. 

I turned the car toward I-70. I almost got on.

But I changed my mind and got back on 76 and headed toward the Turnpike. Dean had Lisa and Ben. Cas said he’d shielded me, but I didn’t know how long that would last and to where. If anything followed me to the Braedens…

He’d never forgive me. Hell, I’d never forgive myself.

I drove North, but the farther from that intersection I got, the worse the fear grew, and I was swallowing back panic when I grabbed my phone as if by instinct and hit speed dial 3. 

It rang seven times. Then, voicemail:  “ _ This is Dean’s other, other cell, so you must know what to do” _ _.” _

It hadn’t changed in years. I wondered if he even used this one anymore, imagined he had a new one, a different number, for his life now. But it had rung, right? So it had to be in use to some degree.

The tone blared through the speaker and I swallowed back more panicked tears, too afraid to care about sounding like a wuss. 

“Dean,” I choked. “It’s me. Y/N.” My voice was weak, trembling, varying in pitch. “I know you’re out. I—I don’t know if—” I faltered, rushed on: “I’m in trouble. I’m going to Bobby’s, should be there by tomorrow. If you can—” I sniffed, swiped a sleeve across my eyes and shook myself. “Please, Dean. I need you.”  
I hung up the phone, practically throwing it into the passenger seat. A part of me instantly regretted the call. I’d promised Sam, and Dean didn’t deserve this. But then, what did a promise to Sam mean at this point? I couldn’t do this without Dean. That much I knew. I didn’t know if he would show; I thought me might, and I grappled with how to break the news.

I kept driving until morning. When the sun had fully risen past the horizon, I pulled over at a rest stop just outside of Youngstown, parked as out of the way as I could, locked the doors and curled up in the backseat.

I slept fitfully for a few hours, too afraid to fully relax into sleep, and around eleven I got out, jogged around the parking lot to wake myself up and loosen my joints, got some pretzels and one of those Starbucks bottled coffees from the vending machine, and hit the road. 

I called Bobby when I was about five hours out, deciding even a minor head’s up would be a better alternative than a complete surprise. 

“Singer.”

“Bobby, it’s Y/N.”

Silence on the other end, then, “Well, damn. Wasn’t expecting you. Good to hear your voice, girl.” He paused. “But I’m guessin’ this can’t be good news.”

I gave a half-hearted chuckle. “No, it isn’t. I need a place to crash. I can tell you everything when I get there.”

“Door’s always open. You okay?”

_ What a question. _ “I’ll survive. Be there around midnight, I think.”

“Stay safe.”

I hung up the phone and settled in for the last stretch of the haul. 

By the time I pulled into the yard, I was blasting the A/C and had the windows down in an attempt to keep myself from falling asleep at the wheel. Bobby stood in the door, silhouetted by the warm light of the house, as I limped my way up the porch steps. Brows knit together in concern, he still handed me a silver flask that I was certain was made of actual silver. I took it and swallowed down the holy water inside before handing it back.

“Can’t be too careful,” he said, before pulling me into a rough yet loving bear hug. 

I definitely knew that much. Bobby stepped back and shut the door. His eyes scanned me from top to bottom as he chewed his lip. “What the hell happened to you?”

“Demons.” I didn’t know where to go from there, how to start, and so everything came out in a gush. “Something big’s happening, they needed to use me, Cas brought me back because he thought that they could use my abilities with Sam to find the Horn and I was captured but it didn’t work but--”

Bobby reached out and grabbed my shoulder. “Okay,” he said. His eyes were wide and searching, almost fearful, I thought. “Tell you what. We’ll talk in the morning. Couch is already made up. I’d give you the guest room, but I’ve been using it as storage and the bed’s covered in buckshot.”

I nodded numbly and let him steer me toward the couch. “You get some sleep,” he said as I sank into the cushions. “You need anything, you holler.”

I barely heard him. I slept. 

 

* * *

 

I awoke to the low rumble of male voices and stirred slowly, reminding myself where I was and why. I blinked my eyes open and stretched, listening. 

“I don’t know why she’s here. Couldn’t make out half of what she was sayin’ last night. Somethin’ to do with your brother, though.”

“What? Sam?”

That voice was unmistakable.

I bolted off the couch, stumbling onto the rug in my hurry as my legs caught in the blankets, and scampered across the room toward the kitchen.

Bobby was seated at the kitchen table, leaning on one arm, hand wrapped around a cup of coffee, a newspaper spread in front of him, ignored. 

Dean Winchester was leaning against the counter, arms crossed over his chest. They both looked up when I appeared in the doorway.

He looked the same and he looked different. Same bow-legged, wide-shouldered stance. Same clothes; jeans and a button-down over a t-shirt. Same hair. Same five o’clock shadow and freckles and eyes that reminded me too much of his brother.

But he looked good. Healthy. He’d filled out since I had last seen him, no longer the hollow shell of a man but more vibrant, strong. He looked tired, but normal _, I’ve been driving all night_ tired, not _I went to hell,_ _tried to save the world, and lost my brother_ tired. The skin beneath his eyes no longer sagged, and warm color and a tinge of rosiness had replaced the gauntness in his face. And I realized, suddenly: he no longer looked like a dead man. He looked alive for the first time in years. 

He cracked a wry smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes, but when he spoke there was warmth in his tone.  “Morning, sweetheart.” He said it softly, maybe a little strained, lacking the usual buoyancy I remembered but with affection all the same. 

Something broke inside of me. I felt tears pool behind my eyelids. I crossed the room without hesitation and grabbed him, wrapping my arms across his middle and burying my face in his shoulder, and cried.

He stiffened at first but didn’t try move away. After a moment, he exhaled and relaxed, his arms coming around my shoulders, holding me loosely but close. 

I broke further, something just  _ opening _ within and pouring out. Maybe it was the contact, the closeness to another human being who knew, who just  _ got it _ , even if he didn’t understand, even if he was coming into this late and knowing nothing. Maybe it was trust; finally here, after a month of subterfuge and insecurity, was someone I never doubted, someone who always championed goodness and truth in my mind. Maybe it was just Dean, the rumble of his voice, the scent of leather and soap, the aura of protection, that I’d missed for so long. 

I clenched my fists in his shirt and just cried, too far gone to care about how broken I looked. I don’t know how long I stood like that, unaware of time or circumstance, but when the sobs quieted I just shook, clinging, desperate.

Dean rubbed slow circles into my back, whispered “Ssh” and “okay” and “I’ve got you” and other singles off the platitude soundtrack and I slowly unfolded and stepped away, looking up into his eyes and then quickly away, suddenly embarrassed. I pulled out a chair from the table and sank into it, exhausted.

Dean opened a cabinet, pulled out a glass and filled it with water from the sink. He came over and pulled a chair around the end of the table, turning it so his knees were pointed at me. He held out the glass.

“Here,” he said.

I accepted it and took a long drink, then set the glass on the table. “Thanks.”

He looked me over, taking in my haggard appearance, seeming to count every cut and bruise, eyes tripping and lingering on the IV site which was still wound with blood-stained gauze before moving back up to my face.

“Who did this?” A steady anger leveled beneath his calm.

How could I even bring myself to tell him? Maybe it had been a mistake to call him, to drop this on him. I looked between him and Bobby, weighing whether a slow build up or a quick reveal would sting less.

Bobby answered for me. He had an uncharacteristic caution about him. “You said something about demons.”

I nodded. I knew he’d heard me last night when I’d mentioned Sam, knew Sam’s name was ringing in Dean’s ears, too, but they were both waiting for me with an impressive patience. 

“Okay,” Dean said. “Start from the beginning.”

There was instant comfort at his words. The calm attentiveness. The heavy yet reserved anger that I’d been hurt. The instinctive protectiveness that came out of him. Dean wasn’t Sam. He never had that gentle, puppy-eyed bedside manner that Sam used so patiently and perfectly with victims, but gentle wasn’t what I needed. I needed Dean’s steadiness, that determination to fix whatever was wrong and do it as quickly and efficiently as possible.

I took a breath. “I was in Costa Rica.”

“Right. You were out.” He didn’t try to hide his confusion.

I nodded. “A little over a month ago I started having dreams. About here. The states. I started to get this pull to come back. It was like the ones I used to get, you know? Something told me to go to Atlantic City; I couldn’t stop thinking about it, it felt like I was compelled to be there. So I left. I--”

“Wait. You’re telling me you had these...urges, and you didn’t call me?”

I stared at him, then back to Bobby. He was leaning forward on his elbows, reflecting Dean’s cocktail of concern and frustration.

“I...well, no. No offense, Dean, but we weren’t really talking much. I didn’t want to bother you.”

He blinked quickly a few times, eyes widening. “Bother — ” He shook his head. “Fine. So you came back.”

“I was in the city maybe two hours when a couple of demons grabbed me. I woke up in the basement of a warehouse with a few other captives and an IV in my arm.”

“Don’t tell us you were there this whole month,” Bobby said.

I shook my head. “I got out pretty quickly.”

“How?” Bobby asked.

I didn’t answer right away. I took a drink of water. My avoidance alerted Dean. He placed a hand on my forearm.

“Y/N,” he said. I thought I detected a slight quaver in his voice. “How’d you get out?”

I felt tears well behind my eyelids again. I swallowed. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I should’ve called. I should’ve told you as soon as I knew.”

The hand on my arm tightened. He leaned forward, anxious. Across the table, Bobby mirrored him. Dean ducked his head to catch my eyes. “Sam?”

I couldn’t speak. I closed my eyes, tight-lipped, and nodded. 

“How long?” he demanded.

“Dean — ”

“ _ How long? _ ”

I opened my eyes. Bobby had stood and gone to the window, looking out over the yard. “He told me he’d been back a year. I was with him for a month. But he’s — ”

Dean’s eyes registered shock then hope and then anger. “You’ve been with him a month and you didn’t call.”

Bobby turned around, defensive. “Dean…” he warned.

The chair scraped back with a groan as Dean got up and paced to the edge of the kitchen. He paused in the doorway and scrubbed his hand down his face, as if he could rub away the entire situation. For a full minute, no one said anything, and then he turned around.

“It’s not Sam,” he said, as if it were obvious.  
Bobby gaped, looking between the two of us. “It’s Sam,” I said. “But—”

He didn’t let me finish. He cut me off with a sharp wave of his hand. “It can’t be Sam. Because if it was Sam, I’d have known. He would’ve gone right to Cicero, or to here, or to you.”

“We don’t know that,” Bobby said.

“Oh, come on! It’s what I did! I went straight to you,” he said, jabbing a finger at me, “looking for him, and when you didn’t know where he was, we came here.” He huffed out a long breath and chuckled. “Hell,” he added. “That kid was crazy about you. You really think he wouldn’t have tried to find you the minute he got back?”

“He’s got a point, Y/N.”

I shook my head, hard, and groaned. Of course that thought had occurred to me a month ago. Sam’s “protect you both” logic may have been sound, but it had never felt entirely right for exactly the reasons Dean was spewing. “Will you shut up for a minute and listen to me? I’m not arguing with you.” 

Dean stopped moving long enough to  _ really _ look at me, adding this new information about Sam to my calling him frantically in the middle of the night and showing up at Bobby’s out of nowhere, looking like I'd been through the wringer, with Sam nowhere to be found. I saw fear and denial and cold rage sweep over his face in rapid succession. “Where is he?” he growled,  moving toward his coat by the door.

“Sit down, boy,” Bobby barked, pouring himself another cup of coffee. “Let’s hear her out before you run off and do somethin’ stupid.”

Reluctantly, Dean sank back into the chair, but he was jittery, restless.

“You’re not wrong,” I began, turning the water glass in my hands. “Sam’s human, but he isn’t right. He’s…” I sighed, rubbed my forehead. “Look. He pulled me out of that basement. When I woke up, we were in a cabin in New Jersey, and he and Cas told me he was undercover leading some demons trying to find something called the Horn of Gabriel. They spun some story about how having an empath around could be useful. For two weeks I stayed with him, hunted with him, and then two weeks ago, I think, the demons decided they wanted me closer and Sam turned me over to them.”

Bobby leaned back in his chair and took of his hat. He swiped a hand across his head sighed. “So this,” he said, indicating me and my unexpected appearance, “is really Sam’s doing.”

I nodded, glanced away. I explained about the blood, the experiments they were doing, what they hoped to accomplish with not only mine, but that of everyone else they captured. I explained what they tried to get me to do, glossing over the details and dancing lightly around the subject of Sam, barely hinting, not entirely willing to delve into what had happened between us.

Bobby shook his head in some kind of stunned acceptance.  “But you got out.”

“He  _ let  _ me out,” I said. “Slipped me the key and gave me the car. Said it had gotten too dangerous. Told me to come here.” I paused. 

“So whose side is he on? Heaven’s or Hell’s?”

“I don’t know. Cas said Sam was just acting under his orders, but what I saw when I was captured.... I don’t know how much of it was real.”

Dean had been eerily silent during the entire exchange, but he spoke up now. “But he let you out.” 

I sighed. “Yeah. I don’t know, Dean. You didn’t see him.”

He shook his head. “Maybe not. And I don’t know what happened in that warehouse.” His eyes fell on me and were gentle, asking but not  _ quite  _ asking. “But if there’s any part of him that’s still my brother, we need to find him.”

I held his gaze for several seconds. “He was running, too. Cas said last night that he was headed south.”

He pushed himself up from the table. 

“Where do you think you’re going?” Bobby said.

“I’m calling Cas,” he snapped. “He’s got a hell of a lot more explaining to do than she does.” He looked away from Bobby and back at me. “You okay?”

“I dunno,” I said. “But look, before you do that, listen: Cas is the one pulling the strings. I don’t know how Sam got out of the Cage, but once Cas got wind of it, he got Sam working with him. He realized they needed an empath, he knew...he knew he could use me with Sam. He’s the one who planted the impulse to get me there, and he’s the one who ordered Sam to lock me up.”

A muscle twitched in Dean’s jaw. “I’ll deal with Cas,” he growled, shrugging on his coat. “You take care of yourself. I’ll be back.” He let the door slam behind him. 

I watched him trudge across the yard on foot and then crossed my arms on the table and laid my head down. Bobby’s heavy hand fell on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “You’ll be alright, kiddo,” he sighed. “We’ll figure it out. Meantime, there’s clean towels in the bathroom and I’ll cook up some breakfast.”

I forced myself up out of the chair and to my duffel bag, where I grabbed a clean set of clothes before dragging myself upstairs.I took my time, scrubbing away more than dirt beneath the scalding water, sitting down to pick splinters and grass from the scratches on my feet. They were shallow cuts, but they stung. Removing the gauze around my elbow revealed an impressive bruise--they hadn’t been gentle with the needles by any means.

Physically, at least, the damage could have been far worse, I knew. I needed nutrition and water and rest, but I was in one piece. 

Dean was still gone when I treaded downstairs wrapped in a hoodie and a pair of grey sweatpants. I sat down at the table as Bobby heaped scrambled eggs onto a plate.

“You want coffee?”

“I probably shouldn’t, really. Water’s fine.”

We ate together in silence, and I packed away as much as I could and then forced myself to drink an additional full glass of water. Bobby got up, dumped his dishes in the sink and rubbed his hands on the front of his jeans. “Well,” he said. “Guess I’d better clean out that guest room after all. You need anythin’?”

I shook my head. “You want any help?”

He made a face and waved dismissively. “I want you to take it easy. I mean it,” he threatened, and went off down the hallway. 

I drank the last of my glass and then stood up and went to the pantry, curious. After sifting through cans of chili and boxes of rice, I found what I’d hoped for: a cannister of cocoa.

I heated up a mug of water in the microwave and then stirred it in, wrapped my hands around the warm ceramic and took it out to the porch. I pulled the hood around my ears and bent my nose over the cup, breathing in the steam before taking a sip.

It was Tuesday, November 29, making it exactly four weeks since I’d come back to the states. It felt like a decade. I wondered what came next; Dean, I knew, would want to go after his brother. I wasn’t sure whether or not I would join him.

Movement in the distance caught my attention and I looked up to see Dean making his way between scrap piles and old clunkers, hands shoved deep in his pockets and shoulders hunched against the South Dakota chill. I sipped my cocoa and waited.

He stomped up the steps and into the house without a word, then came back moments later with a bottle of beer and sat down beside me. He popped the lid and took a long drag.

“So,” I said.

He looked at me from the corner of his eye and raised his brows. “So,” he said. “Glad some things never change: Angels are still dicks.”

I laughed; I couldn’t help it. “Told you. He tell you what you wanted to know?”

He took another drink and rolled his lips together. “He filled in the gaps about what he and Sam and I guess all of Hell are doing.” He sighed. “Like you said, doesn’t know how Sam got here, doesn’t know what’s wrong with him...or at least that’s what he says.”

“You don’t believe him?”

“Hell, I don’t know what to believe at this point, but something ain’t right about this.” He turned the bottle in his hand, studying the label. “I’m sorry, Y/N.”

“What for?” I asked, surprised. 

He shook his head and squinted up at the weak winter sun. “Dickbags with wings found another way to screw us, didn’t they? First me and Sam as vessels, now you as...angel GPS.” He pulled down another drink. “You weren’t one of us. You could’ve been spared all of this.”

It was eerie how accurately he articulated just what I’d been thinking the night before. “I chose this life,” I said firmly, and we both heard the unspoken “ _ chose Sam”. _ I changed the subject. “I should have called you a month ago, Dean. It should’ve been the first thing I did.” 

“Yeah, well,” he took a final swallow of beer and tossed the bottle on the ground where it clinked together with a growing collection. “You didn’t. So what? Now we’re here.”

“What’re you gonna do?”

He sighed. “I don’t know. You told me my brother’s alive and all I want to do is start driving and get him back, but I don’t know if I should.”

“Honestly I’m surprised you’re not already on the road.”

“It’s not just me anymore.” He leaned his forearms on his knees and studied the mosaic of bottles and broken glass on the ground. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“You didn’t know you were walking back into the life when you came back.”

“No.”

“You ever think about leaving, once you did? Turn around and head back to Costa Rica?”

I knew what he was digging at and I wanted to lie for him, but I couldn’t. “No,” I said. “I knew something wasn’t right and I still couldn’t leave him again.”

He pursed his lips and nodded, understanding. “It’s almost enough knowing he’s out there.” After a moment he stood and stretched. “I’ve gotta call Lisa,” he said, and extended his hand. “Come on. It’s friggin’ cold out here.”

I let him pull me up and followed him into the house. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed! I'm out of town for awhile and will post when I get back. Hopefully this can hold you over!


	13. Chapter 13

Dean was on the phone with Lisa a long time. He paced from the kitchen, through the hallway, upstairs, around the bedrooms, back down, out through the yard, and back maybe a dozen times. His voiced ebbed and flowed as he passed through the house, sometimes low and solemn and other times gilded with a chuckle or the lilt of a joke. He finally settled on the front steps again, shoulders hunched around his ears against the cold.

I sat on the couch, idly flipping through TV channels and playing with the tassels on the throw laying over the back of the couch, until he came back in and plopped down in the recliner. He drummed his fingers on the armrest and stared at the floor. After awhile, he said, “Anything good on?” 

I shook my head. “Figures,” he scoffed. He grew quiet again. 

It was nearing noon. Bobby appeared in the hallway. “Room’s cleared out. I figure you two can fight over it.”

I looked at Dean. A mischievous grin spread across his lips but didn’t make it to his eyes. I made as if to jump off the couch and bolt, but he waved a hand. “Nah, it’s yours.” He flipped up the footrest and pushed back against the seat, reclining almost horizontally. “I’m good right here.”

In another time and place I might have argued with him, but it had been so long since I’d slept in a real bed, in an actual bedroom, that I didn’t have it in me. 

“You both stay as long as you need, you hear?” Bobby offered.

I nodded. “Thanks, Bobby.”  
“I’ve got a few days,” Dean said, glancing carefully at me. “I’ll stick around some.”

We lazed around the house for most of the afternoon, not really doing much of anything. Bobby took a few calls from the hunting community, but for the most part we were quiet. Around four we piled into Bobby’s truck and drove into town for pizza, then came back and settled down in front of Turner Classic Movies to watch  _ The Great Escape _ .

I made it almost to the end before I was fighting to keep my eyes open. I took my stuff into the back room and fell into bed, completely wiped out.

* * *

 

I woke up with a jolt  in a cold sweat and my heart racing. The digital clock on the nightstand read 11:08. I gave myself a minute to breathe and rolled over to stare at the ceiling. 

I heard movement out in the living room — footsteps padding across the floor, the clink of a glass. I decided that if someone was up, I’d rather have company than lie there in the dark with just my thoughts.

I got up, pulling the quilt off the bed and wrapping it around my shoulders, and went out into the living room. Dean was sitting on the couch, bent over a laptop on the coffee table. A glass of amber liquid sat half-finished beside him, a bottle of Jack beside that.

His eyes scanned my face. “Hey,” he said, scooting over.

“Hey.”

I sat, pulling my knees underneath me. He didn’t ask why I was up; he knew the routine. Him, on the other hand…

He had Google maps pulled up on the computer, and when he saw me see it he flipped it shut and turned on the TV. We sat in silence for awhile, watching an infomercial for HD vision sunglasses.

“So you can see real life better than real life,” Dean snorted.

“God-goggles,” I quipped.

He leaned forward, picked up his glass, took a drink and settled back into the cushions with it.

“So why’d you call me?”

I blinked, surprised. “What?”

“You didn’t call me just because you need a shoulder to cry on, because that’s not how you roll.”

I considered that. “I guess not.”

“You called me because you wanted help fixing this. Tell me I’m wrong.”

I didn’t say anything. 

He finished the last of his whiskey in one quick toss and set it down on the table. “Look,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “You need time. I get that.” He glanced up at me. “But Sam’s out there, and he’s in trouble in more ways than one. I’m with you that he’s messed up, but I can’t leave him out there. And I’m willing to bet you knew I’d say that.”

For a moment I wondered what Lisa had said to him on the phone. I wondered what kind of woman she was, who would compel him to leave and find his recently-dead brother rather than return home. 

“Yeah,” I said on an exhale and smoothing down the blanket around my knees. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

“I’m not asking you to come with me when I go after him. I think you’re better off here. But if there’s some part of him that can be saved, I will hunt down the devil himself to do it.” He paused, then added, “Again.” He cleared his throat. “But you were with him. You tell me.”

I wondered what had changed in Dean the past year that he would bother asking my opinion about his brother. On the subject of Sam, the only opinion Dean had ever cared about or listened to was his own, even pushing aside Sam’s own point of view. Now he was taking my word for it that Sam had gone a little bad and asking what I thought we should do it about it. Maybe domestic life had changed him. Maybe losing Sam the way we did had shredded the steel cage of his resolve about his brother. Or maybe he remembered that at one time, the two of us had always believed in Sam, even when Sam didn’t.

I took so long to respond I thought Dean might get up and go to bed after all. He was right, of course. I’d called him mostly on impulse born out of cold fear and desperation, but I also knew I needed a solution. I didn’t know how I felt about Sam, and maybe that was because I doubted what Dean had never and would never question in his life: that Sam could be anything but good. Hell had twisted Dean’s soul into a torturer, and he’d come back broken, but himself. Then again, he hadn’t carried the devil in his skin and spent half a century locked in a cage with him. I didn’t know what had happened to Sam, and I didn’t know who he was or why, but I understood Dean’s motivation. We had to try to figure it out. I needed to know if we could bring him back.

“The first thing he did when he found me tied up in the basement was get me out,” I reflected. “And once he did it was like....he realized he shouldn’t have been so impulsive, like maybe that was a bad move. And from that point it was like everything he did was to cover for that one mistake.”

“All about the mission. Okay.”

“He was like a machine. He did whatever it took to get the job done. Including giving me to demons, apparently.”

“And?”

“Parts of him are still there. We went on a hunt right before it happened. I got hurt, he patched me up, we got to talking…” I shook my head, amazed at how different that night had been from what came after. “He misses you, or at least he made it seem like he does. He was kind, and I thought I could almost feel him again, the way I used to.” I sighed. “I don’t know if that was real or if it’s just what I  _ want _ to be real.”

“Well,” he said. “I’ve gotta find out.”

So much of me  _ didn’t  _ want to find out, wanted to leave the country again and put as much space between me and so-called Sam Winchester as possible. But I still had the image of Sam standing in the motel room just before I’d left seared into my retinas. How overcome with fear he’d been. The real fear in his eyes. How human he’d looked.

I sighed. “I want you to. I think there’s hope. I miss him more now that he’s alive more than I did when he was gone. But it’s like he’s two different people. It’s like there’s still parts of Lucifer in him.”

A shadow crossed Dean’s face and he set his jaw. 

“When are you leaving?”

He stretched and scratched his head. “Well, I’ve gotta find him first. Normally wouldn’t be a problem, except I don’t know what he’s driving, can’t trace a GPS because I don’t know what phone he has, and don’t know what his credit cards are. All I’ve got is a direction.”

“Maybe Cas can find him.”

Dean scoffed. “Because he’s been helpful.”

He kicked his feet up on the coffee table. “Anyway,” he said, shifting gears. “How was your year off the map?”

We passed time in cordial conversation, trading stories of the past year and avoiding the reason for that year with a loud silence until eventually we were both relaxed enough to retreat to our own corners for the night.

The following few days were more of the same; we three seemed suspended in quicksand, moving in a slow, calm pace despite Dean’s underlying urgency to find his brother. We searched every way we could, and Dean was two steps from heading out the door and just driving until he chased him down when Cas, flustered and ruffled, popped into the living room three days later.

“They’ve taken Sam.”

The change in Dean from complacent, unhurried family man to steeled, unforgiving hunter was abrupt and seamless. “Where,” he growled. He was already moving to his bag. Bobby stepped in from the hallway, coiled. 

“New Jersey,” he said. He looked at me. “You know the precise location.”

I bristled, suddenly and unexpectedly wound with a defensive instinct I wasn’t aware of having. It unraveled as anger. “How? How could they get Sam, and not me? Or did you not protect him, too?”

Dean’s head snapped around, eyes landing accusingly on the angel.

“They were more interested in Sam than in you. It was easier to conceal you from them. You they can let go. Sam they have to punish.”

“Punish  _ how _ ?” Bobby challenged.

“Sam agreed to a set of terms upon his release from the Cage,” Castiel explained. “When he agreed to work with them to find the Horn, he swore loyalty. Should he go back on his word, they would send him back to Hell.”

Dean’s eyes widened and he hastened his movements. “How much time do we have?”

“I don’t know. They will take their time, but whatever Sam is experiencing...it isn’t pleasant.”

“Bobby, we’ve gotta go.”

Bobby raised a hand. “Hold on just a minute. We don’t even know what we’re walking into. We need a plan. Y/N, you were there.”

“It’s a warehouse,” I said. “In some forest outside of Atlantic City. It wasn’t heavily guarded when I was there… but I have a feeling it probably is now.” I looked to Castiel for confirmation. 

He nodded. “I imagine it will be. I can’t get close enough to see.”

“Okay.” Dean had stopped moving and was looking between the three of us. “So it’s warded against angels. We’ve dealt with that before.” He turned his attention to Cas. “If Bobby and I can scrap the sigils, can you get in and grab Sam?”

“I should be able to.”

Dean looked at me. “You’ve still got the knife?” I nodded. “And we have the Colt, too. So — ”

“Just how many demons are we dealing with?” Bobby interrupted. “We’re not going off half-cocked here, and last I checked the Colt ain’t exactly a full automatic.”

“There are maybe two, three dozen there during the day. There were only five the night I broke out. More now that they’ve got Sam on lockdown.”

Dean slung his bag over his shoulder and made for the door. “We can work out the details on the road. I’m gonna check the weapons. Bobby, you coming?”

“Right behind you, kid,” he said, turning and heading to grab his own supplies. 

“I will meet you in New Jersey,” Castiel said, and vanished. 

I went to the spare bedroom, tossed my few belongings my own bag, shrugged on my coat and went into the yard where Dean was reaching into the cab of...not the Impala. It was a tan Ford pickup. I stopped short.

“What is  _ this? _ ”

He straightened. “Back in Indiana, it’s — ” He noticed my bag and halted, then shook his head adamantly. 

“Forget it, sweetheart. You’re sitting this one out.”

“No way,” I argued. 

He slammed the door shut. “Not gonna happen. They’ve already got Sam. You better believe they’re expecting you to come back. You’re not getting anywhere near that.”

He brushed  past me and I grabbed his elbow. “You need me.”

He tried to shrug me off but I held on, eyes glaring into his. “I’m the only one who’s been in there. I know the layout. I can get in touch with someone on the inside, too. And I know I’m not the best in a fight, but three’s better than two.” 

I watched him weigh it, saw him struggle between the logic that I was right and that firstborn instinct to protect. He knew logistically another hunter was better; he also knew it meant he’d have another back to cover. 

“You  _ need _ me,” I repeated.

He grunted and shook his arm free. “We leave in five.” He stomped back toward the house.

It was more like ten thanks to Bobby, who insisted, despite Dean’s arguing, that he should drive separately on the grounds that you can always need a second getaway vehicle in case something went wrong. 

Still, we were on the road before noon. I settled back against the Ford’s cloth seats as it rumbled an accompaniment to Dean’s best-of mullet rock. I sniffed; the truck smelled like burning oil and spilled coffee.

“What’s up with this car?” I asked.

Dean shrugged. “Needed a change, I guess. ‘Cept now I’m wishing I had the arsenal.”

I remembered Sam putting the iPod in the Chevy, not out of irreverence but because he needed something new and different to keep his memories at bay. 

“Besides, I’ve been working construction, and this is better.”

“Construction? You?”

“What? I can build stuff.”

I snorted. “Well...I miss it. This car sucks.”

“You suck,” he said, but he was grinning. 

The light conversation barely kept the heaviness of the situation at bay, but it was how we’d always done it. Avoid the inevitable nightmare up ahead through banter until it was impossible, and then shut down completely. That was like Winchester 101.

As we drew nearer to New Jersey and farther from Sioux Falls, the quieter we grew, the more distant our separate thoughts became. We stopped briefly for dinner just into Illinois, and Dean insisted he was good to drive straight through until morning. Bobby grumbled something about roadkill and grudgingly followed behind.

I felt a profound comfort and security in this scene, despite the lack of the Impala’s familiarity. Still, Dean was in his place behind the wheel, occasionally singing softly under his breath, and the highway thrum was hypnotic. At some point on the road I dozed off, lulled to sleep by the engine and country darkness surrounding us.

_ Behind closed lids, under the shroud of sleep, black-eyed figures kept in close pursuit as I tore down hallway after endless hallway, skidding to a stop only when I met a dead end. I turned around to face my pursuers and Sam stepped from the darkness, eyes predatory inkwells and teeth bared in a snakelike sneer as he closed in.  “Oh, baby. Don’t you know you can’t save us both?” _

Someone was shaking my arm roughly. “Y/N!” 

I jolted out of sleep, a choked yelp erupting from me as I was yanked back into reality. I threw my arm out for something solid and ended up clutching the top of the door.

Dean was dividing his attention between the road and me, his eyes darting back and forth too quickly to track. “You good?” he asked. His eyes searched mine, check the road, came back. I shook myself and rubbed my eyes, sat up straighter and adjusted my coat around my shoulders. “Yeah,” I said, feeling more grounded by the second. “I’m okay.”

Dean kept driving and then nodded once as he seemed to reach a decision. He suddenly pulled over and parked the car. He turned, draping his arm across the back of the seat, and looked me dead in the eye.

“You listen to me,” he said. “I’m getting my brother back, but I swear to God, he isn’t gonna lay a finger on you. He isn’t getting anywhere  _ near _ you until we figure out what’s going on with him and put him back together. You hear me?”

I nodded. I didn’t know how he knew. I must’ve been talking. Then again, it was Dean. What  _ didn’t _ he know about fear and nightmares? We probably shared the same trepidation about Sam. The last time Dean had seen Sam, his brother had had a frail hold on Lucifer. I knew he worried about more than Sam’s life, knew he worried about what he’d find when he got to Sam, who he’d be, whether Dean could save him this time.

I shivered. I wondered if Dean was aware of how scared he felt.

I gasped and twisted to stare at him, mouth agape. “Dean…”

His eyes blew out in panic and confusion. He settled a hand on my shoulder. “Hey, I’m not letting anything happen to you, okay?”

Little pinpricks of alarm trickled from his fingers. I shoved it his hand away and scrambled to unbuckle my seatbelt. “No, Dean, it’s...it’s just...I can  _ feel _ you.”

He blinked. “You can — ?”

I felt suddenly smothered. I pushed open the door and plunged into the night air, taking several steps away from the car before bending over, hands on my knees and sucking in big gulps of air like a beached fish.

I heard the squeal of Dean’s door opening and then the rumble of the Chevelle  approaching as Bobby caught up to us, the headlights sweeping across the shoulder where I stood. Dean stopped just out of arm’s reach as Bobby climbed out. “What’s going on?” he called out, and I didn’t just hear but  _ felt _ his concern, though much more faint than Dean’s, rolling across me to intertwine with Dean’s growing bafflement. 

“I dunno, she — ”

“I’m  _ fine!” _ I insisted, even as I felt my legs wobble and sank into the grass, propping myself on my elbows. “I just need a minute.” I closed my eyes and focused on drawing breath through my nose and releasing it in a slow stream between my teeth. I was shaking with the kind of adrenaline that, as a teenager years ago, I’d get from those overly grotesque, painfully fabricated haunted houses. It was a terrible exhilaration. I felt preternaturally alive, invigorated, but also overstimulated and sick. 

I stayed that way for several minutes. Dean had walked away to talk to Bobby, but the two of them approached me now. Their concern had lessened, was barely registering, and I wondered if they’d calmed down deliberately or if they’d realized I was in no real danger. “Y/N?” Bobby asked. “You okay?”

I nodded and blinked up at them, squinting in the headlights. “Yes. It just...it just hit me.”

“Your uh, psychic mojo working again?” Dean asked. He’d never been fully comfortable with it, had never liked anything psychic in the first place and was especially uncomfortable knowing his emotions were out there for someone else’s interpretation. 

“Yeah…” I marvelled. “I think...yeah. They’re definitely there.”

“So what you just...randomly got a jolt of feeling juice? Just like that?”

I shook my head. “I guess? Or maybe it was gradual and I just realized it.” I was warm. I felt more awake than I had in months. My nerves were tingling with a low electric pulse. 

“This is all well and good,” Bobby said. “But maybe we should keep moving and talk about this later.”

“Right,” Dean said, still staring at me in a state of shock. “C’mon.”

We piled back into the cars and kept going. Dean and I were both silent, thoughtful. His emotions were steady now, in check, and just as it had been years ago he faded into the background and I was left with just my own feelings.

He cleared his throat. “So. They’ve been dormant since Sam said ‘yes’, right?”

“Yeah. Once Sam was cut off, so were they.”

“But Sam’s been back, and nothing until now. And now all of a sudden they’re back full-force?”

“Brian said I needed to feel safe if I wanted them to come back,” I said. “And I guess being around you and Bobby again was enough to make that happen.” I shrugged. “I dunno. That makes sense to me at least.”

He took a minute to mull that over. “Just keep it quiet, okay? We don’t need any demons catching wind of that.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” I said. I couldn’t help the relief and even joy I felt that they were back, but I wasn’t blind to the fact that any danger I’d been in before was magnified now. I didn’t need to be empathic to know that fear was gnawing at Dean again, along with regret that I’d come along. 

“It might help us,” I offered as an attempt to ease his fears. 

“How do you figure?”

“Between your brute strength and my mysteriously reappearing psychic powers, what can stop us?”

He snorted. “Great. We sound like the fuckin’ X-men.”

I grinned. “In all seriousness, though, they’ve come in handy in the past. I used to get those really powerful gut feelings, just knowing something was about to happen, or that we should go a certain way, or do some oddly specific and seemingly meaningless task…. Remember that vamp nest in Muncie?” 

He furrowed his brows a moment and then nodded as it came back. “Right. You steered us right around a trap. Huh. Forgot about that.” He watched the road another minute, then asked, “Okay so remind me...how does this thing work again?”

“Don’t worry, Dean, I can’t feel everything you’re feeling all the time.”  
“I wasn’t—”

“You were.”

He twitched. “Fine. So only sometimes. I think I remember that.”

“It has to be a pretty strong emotion. We have to be in close vicinity. If I focus or touch you or both, I can tell more. Same with strangers. I don’t walk around feeling everyone in the world, but if I single someone out and really concentrate, I can get a reading. And if I’m remembering right, if it’s like, a big crowd of people all excited or all angry, I’ll get hit with that, too.”

He chewed his lip and then asked, softly, “But it was different with Sam, right?”

I watched the lines on the road fly by. “Yeah. I always knew everything Sam was feeling.”

He shifted in his seat and drummed his fingers on the wheel. “Well, you’re still the psychic equivalent of the Heart ring.”

“What?”

“The Heart ring. Planeteers... Captain Planet?” Seeing my blank stare, he gawked and shook his head in disbelief. “And you had the normal childhood...” he muttered. “Forget it.” He stretched out his hand and turned up the music, ending our conversation. 


	14. Chapter 14

We spent the night at a cheap motel in Fremont after Bobby convinced Dean that none of us would be any help to Sam if we were zombies by the time we reached Atlantic City. We managed a short six hours before Dean had us up at the crack of dawn, and we were back on the road.

We made it to Atlantic City by two that afternoon, and I managed to navigate to Sam’s cabin. Dean picked the lock with ease and we stepped inside.

It was mostly unchanged from when I’d last seen it; there was even still a pillow and blanket on the couch. Still, there were signs that Sam had left in a hurry: cabinets and doors open, a few odds and ends tossed on the floor. I took it in and went to the closet and pulled out the weapons panel. Besides a sawed off and a handful of knives, Sam had cleared it out.

“He knew he had to be prepared for a fight,” Dean observed. He’d come up behind me and pulled the sawed-off from the wall and popped it open, checking for shells, and then put it back.

“We’ll get him back,” I said, attempting to be reassuring.

“About that,” he said, shutting the closet door. “Are you sure you’re okay with this? I mean…”

I sighed. “Yeah. And not. It’s...mmm, I’m conflicted, to be honest with you. But I loved Sam. And if he’s still in there…”

Dean nodded, understanding, and went over to the table where Bobby had pulled up blueprints of the quarry on a laptop. “Alright, kiddo,” he said. “Tell us what you know.”

I pointed to the perimeter of the building. “I almost guarantee the gate will be guarded, but the fence is just a really tall chain link. We could come in through the back with some bolt cutters or something, probably. Or just climb it.”

Bobby nodded and zoomed in on the building. “Typical warehouse, mostly open?”

“Yeah. One door that I’m aware of. This room has some furniture in it, but that’s about it. There’s a smaller room over here,” I pointed to the bottom right corner, “and then there’s a door going downstairs, where they keep most of their captives, and one going up, where the lab is and they had Brian and me in cages.”

Bobby clicked to another screen. “It looks like there’s two rooms downstairs.”

Dean sat down. “So Sam’s either upstairs or down, right?”

I nodded.

“You wanna guess which?”

“Probably down. They’d probably keep him away from...everything.”

“Okay. So. We need to get in, scratch the sigils, get Sam, and get out.”

Bobby leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “Why are the sigils that important. Do we  _ need _ Castiel in there?”

I thought he had a point, but Dean nodded. “Two things. If Sam’s in bad shape, we might not be able to get him out there on our own. He’s not exactly fun-sized. And we could use Cas for backup, at least.”

Bobby held up his hands. “Alright, I was just sayin’...”

As if on cue, the angel appeared in the room. “Do you have a plan?” he asked pointedly.

“Working on it!” Dean snapped. He turned to me. “We can’t just walk in the front door. If we went around back here,” he traced his finger across the screen at the back of the building, “can we go in that window?”

“Yeah,” I said. “If we have a way up there.”

“Blueprints show a fire escape,” Bobby pointed out.

“Great,” Dean said, excitement bubbling in his voice. “What do you think? Couple hours after sunset?”

“The entire perimeter is guarded,” Castiel said. “I was able to conduct reconnaissance while you were traveling. If you’re to sneak in, you’ll need a diversion.”

“Perfect for you, then,” Dean grumbled.

Castiel nodded. “Perhaps Bobby and I can manage that.”

Bobby looked between Castiel and Dean. “As much as I hate splitting up the party, it might be our best move. That way, I can have the car ready when you all bust Sam out.”

“Okay,” Dean said, pushing up from the table. “I’m going on a supply run. We’ve got a decent amount of time until nightfall, and we’ll head out.”

* * *

Bobby drove us as I guided him by memory down the winding forest road to the quarry, directing him to pull off into what I thought was the same clearing Sam had parked my getaway car in. From there, our group split: Bobby and Castiel kept to the woods and headed straight to the quarry to set up a diversion, while Dean and I hiked all the way around to the far end, keeping a wide perimeter around the compound.

We crept toward the treeline when we reached the other side, and peering out from the bushes counted half a dozen demons on the other side of the fence. Dean signaled to move back, and we retreated into the trees.

“You ready?” 

I took the bolt cutters from my bag and nodded. Dean checked the Colt and then sent a brief text to Bobby and we moved back to the treeline.

We waited with bated breath, coiled to spring.

A massive BOOM erupted from the other side of the compound. The demons on this side whipped around, exchanged wild glances, and bolted toward it.

“Now!”

Dean and I exploded from the trees. I made short work of the fence while he stood watch, armed and ready. Once I’d cut a long slice, Dean pulled it back, bending and twisting it out of the way, and I tossed the bolt cutters away and shimmied inside, Dean close behind.

We sprinted around the yard to the back of the building, stopping below the window. Dean jumped and grabbed the bottom of the ladder, pulling it down with a clash just as another explosion banged across the forest.

“Ladies first,” he said.

I scurried up to the first landing and then took the stairs two at a time until I reached the window. It was a typical, multi-paned warehouse window with a latch that opened part of it in the center. I crouched below it, cupping my hands around my face to peer in. 

Dean settled beside me and slung his bag from around his shoulders, digging for his lockpick. “What’ve you got?”

I shook my head. There was no light inside; all I could see was a black space.

Reaching out for my second plan, I focused my thoughts.  _ “Brian, if you can hear me, I need information. Is there a guard?” _

The silence that answered was deafening.

My mouth tasted sour.

“Y/N?”

I swallowed. “I’ve got nothing.”

Dean straightened and began picking the latch. “Then we’ve gotta hope any demon that was in there took off after Cas and Bobby.”

The latch clicked open and Dean pushed the window in. He motioned for me to step into his hands and boosted me up so I could slide in. There wasn’t much to hold onto and I rolled the few feet to the floor and crouched in the shadows, listening.

Except for the distant hum of machines, it was silent. Nothing moved.

Dean dropped down beside me and took a moment to assess the room. “We’re clear,” he said. He pulled two cans of spray paint out of his bag and handed one to me. We took off the caps and shook them. By then, our eyes had adjusted enough that we could make out shadows and silhouettes.

“Cas said the sigils will be on the walls,” Dean said. He leaned in close to the concrete and took a few steps to the right. “And of course we have to be right on top of the fuckers to see them…” He stepped back and raised the can and sprayed a red slash across the familiar Enochian symbol on the wall.

He glanced at me. “We’ve gotta hurry. If we split up…”

I nodded. “Meet me at the door, okay?” I went left, heart in my throat and stomach fluttering. 

Dean had taken the side that would lead him to the lab, and as I destroyed a sigil with a careful swoosh of red I heard him open the glass door and exhale a “Holy shit.”

On a reflex I turned to peer across at him, but it was too dark to see. Distantly, there was the BOOM of a shotgun. My eyes fell on the cages, and I moved forward mechanically, stopping when I reached Brian’s cage.

The door stood open. The cage was empty except for the cot. There was a dark stain on the concrete.

I lurched away. I must have made some sound; Dean hurried out of the lab toward me, a hand gripping my arm as I slouched with my hands on my knees, attempting to draw in breath.

Bewildered, he looked from me to the cage and back, then gave my arm a squeeze. “Come on,” he said, sounding steadier than he felt. He gave a gentle but firm tug. “He could still be alive. We’ve gotta keep moving.”

I let him lead me back to the wall and we took care of the rest of the sigils. When we reached the stairwell, there were more gunshots, and we moved as fast as we could without making too much noise down the stairs.

Our caution was needless; the main room stood vacant. Whatever distraction Cas had cooked up, it was working.

The lighting in this room allowed us to find and destroy the sigils quickly. The basement door was locked, but Dean made short work of the lock and kicked the door inward. It clanged loudly against the wall. Dean clicked on a flashlight, held it beneath the Colt and took point, moving tactically down. I gripped the knife in one hand and the paint in the other.

I gasped when we reached the bottom and Dean panned the beam across the room.

I had never actually seen this room. I’d been conscious only a little while, and it had been so dark I hadn’t been able to make out anything. What I saw made my stomach churn.

There were only four victims, strung from the ceiling by heavy chains shackled to their wrists. They were pale, dirty shadows of human beings. Each was tethered by a needle to an IV drip, some taking blood, some giving fluids.

Sluggishly, a man’s eyes blinked open. He squinted in the light at Dean and me. “Help me,” he coughed.

We moved immediately toward him and Dean picked open the shackles and lowered him down as I pulled out the IV. It was clear. He leaned heavily on Dean until he found his footing and straightened, rubbing his wrists and shifting slowly from foot to foot. He seemed relatively okay.

“How long have you been here?” I asked, as Dean looked away to pass the light across the walls. They were bare.

“Couple of days?” he said. “What - ”

There was shifting to the left and Dean moved to a middle-aged woman. She yelped and struggled as he reached for the chain. 

“Hey, hey, hey,” he said, raising his hands. “Not here to hurt you. Let me help.”

She stilled, eyes wide and panicked, and we repeated the process. She was weaker and couldn’t stand. Dean scanned the room and then his eyes fell on mine. “We’ll get them down,” he said. He looked at the first guy. “And you’ll get them out of here.” He dug in his pocket and handed the guy his phone. “Take my phone, call 9-1-1 when you get into the woods, and stay hidden.” The guy just stared dumbly, but Dean had moved to another body, checked her pulse when she didn’t move, and cursed.

“This one’s alive,” I said. When he was down, Dean practically shoved him into the guy’s arms. “Get them out,” he barked. He began moving with purpose toward a door at the back. “Y/N, let’s go!”

Dean abandoned all sense of caution and burst through the door, then came to an abrupt stop. I looked over his shoulder.

Unlike the majority of the warehouse, this room was lit by a few florescent lights, and the sudden brightness left us squinting. But we could see enough.

It was mostly empty. A long metal table lined one wall, decorated with a terrifying assortment of sharp, glistening objects, some gilded in red. Just apart from this, toward the far corner, was a rack, with Sam, bare-chested, stretched across it.

He was pale and bloody, carved across his chest and down his sides and over his arms. His head drooped against his shoulder, eyes closed, and I couldn’t breathe.

Dean was a tempest of emotions — shock to horror to rage to desperation — and any hesitation was brief before he crossed to Sam’s side and began untying the leather straps that bound his brother.

I was slower to react, moving my legs only when Dean threw his gaze over me and snapped at me to move. He was worse up close, gaunt and bruised, a long gash across his cheek, his eyes sunk in dark pits, and my hands shook as I fumbled with the buckles.

“C’mon, Sammy, you’re alright,” Dean muttered, and his fear was cold and tangible. “Stay with me, little broth — ”

A force like a tidal wave slammed into me and flung me against the wall, pressing me into the cold concrete so I was immobile.  On the wall opposite me, Dean struggled against invisible bindings and began bellowing curses.

Two demons stood in the doorway. I recognized Judith, her small frame, her serpentine smile. The other was a man, larger, older, stronger. Fearsome.

“Dean!” he belted, clapping his hands together as he strode toward him. “We weren’t expecting you, but then again, we aren’t surprised.” He shrugged. He carried himself with the air of a businessman who knows he’s about to seal a multi-billion dollar deal. 

“You sonofabitch,” Dean spat. 

The demon turned to me and smiled. “I had my doubts about you, too,” he said. He cupped my chin with his long fingers. “But Judith swore that, despite everything, you’d come for him.” He lightly tapped his finger against my nose and chuckled. “Pretty little thing, I guess.”

“Get away from her,” Dean growled, straining forward again, uselessly.

“Shut up,” Judith snapped. She flicked her hand and he groaned, curling in slightly in pain. “Y/N,” she crooned, turning those raven eyes on me. “Come here.”

She crooked her finger and I was yanked from the wall and landed in a heap at her feet, still immobile as though tight cords wrapped me from shoulders to ankles. The other one bent over me, grabbed my by the arms and pulled me upward. 

“I’m no good,” I argued. “You know that. Especially not without Sam.”

“We have enough of his blood now that it shouldn’t matter,” Judith said grinning. “We’ve got what we need, Markus. Want me to blow this place?”

Dean’s eyes widened in his skull as Judith held up a small detonator. “We can’t let the angels get a hold of anything in here,” she said. “And we have to move. So...we thought we’d finish off Sam here at the same time. You’re just a bonus, Dean.” She winked. “You’ll have a minute to wait it out. Take the girl, Markus.”

I met Dean’s eyes and we both went rigid with fear.

Movement across the room caught my attention and I glanced just quickly enough to see Sam’s head suddenly jerk up from the table, his eyes fixed on Markus and the cords of his neck straining. His chest heaved with effort. “Don’t—you—” he panted. At his side, his hand twitched and the two demons were hurled backwards. The invisible bounds around me vanished. Sam’s head slammed back as his body again went limp. 

Dean slid to the floor. In one fluid movement he twisted on the ground, pulled the Colt from its holster and aimed. I had just enough time to roll out of the way and cover my ears as his shot fired. Sound was blasted out of the room, replaced with a high ringing. I raised my head and saw a bullet hole between Markus’s eyes and then Judith pressing down on the detonator just before she opened her mouth in a silent scream and evacuated her host.

Dean mouthed “HURRY” and wasted no time at Sam’s side, slicing through the leather straps instead of taking the time to unbuckle them. He was still semi-conscious as we each slid an arm under his shoulders.

Sound slowly trickled back into the world and I heard Dean mutter, “Gotta lay off the pizza, Sam.” Sam let out a breathy whine as he shuffled his feet with us.

Panic rose in my throat. “Dean, the bombs…”

“I know!” he barked. “Just gotta move…”

We’d only reached the stairs when we heard the first one go off upstairs.

“MOVE!” Dean shouted, and we stumbled through the door in the cacophony. The ceiling caved in and we braced for impact.

It never came.

We were kneeling on the grass in the middle of the road. The warehouse was going up in smoke behind us.

“I got you as far as I could manage.”

Castiel was staggering, a hand clutched in his side as blood seeped between his fingers. “I am...sorry.” He vanished. 

The roar of Bobby’s Chevelle came around the road and he lept out, pale and wide-eyed. He went to Sam, the expression on his face revealing he hadn’t believed Sam to be alive until now. Seeing the state he was in, though, he shook himself and put his hands on Sam, taking in his wounds.

“We’d better get him to a hospital. Come on.”

Together the three of us heaved him into the backseat, and Dean slid in beside him. Bobby floored it out of there toward the nearest ER as Dean pressed towels into the worst of the wounds and I dug red half-moons into my palms. 


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Apologies for the delay! The school year started (the one where I teach high school) and then the other school year started (the one where I'm a graduate student) and just like that, any free time evaporated. Moving forward, I may only be able to post monthly, but I will try my darndest to do better than that!
> 
> 2\. After re-watching and checking the wiki, I think I've taken some liberties with the boys still having the Colt. Surely someone out there has caught that already...whoops! Just chalk it up to this being an AU. It won't be a critical detail in the long run.
> 
> 3\. Enjoy!

 

Dean Winchester stood in the cold, quiet hospital lobby and watched as a team of nurses wheeled his brother away from him, and began to think that he might never feel completely whole again.

He probably would have stood there all night, too, if Bobby hadn’t grabbed his shoulder and steered him to one of the stiff, green upholstered wooden chairs and shoved him into it. He realized that he’d lost track of where Y/N had gone, and his head jerked up in a surge of panic until he saw her come around the corner with three cups of coffee. He let out a breath.

She sank into the chair next to him and pressed a cup into his hands. He didn’t drink it, but he wrapped his fingers around it and appreciated the warmth. Y/N pulled her legs up and sat wrapped with her feet beneath her, closed her eyes, and took a long sip.

Dean cleared his throat. “Can you tell if...How is he?”

She looked up at him, blinked slowly, and shook her head. “I can’t feel anything. I guess since he isn’t conscious.”

Dean nodded.

And so the vigil began. Bobby took care of the paperwork and the questions, and Dean let him. He barely moved; he stirred just enough to borrow Y/N’s phone (and to wonder, briefly, if those other captives had made it out or where they were) to send an update to Lisa and to pace a few laps around the waiting room. A few times Y/N picked up a newspaper or flipped through a magazine, once in awhile mentioning some tidbit from an article in an attempt to start a conversation, but none of them was really into it.

They sat and waited.

It seemed like hours later when a doctor appeared at the door, eyes scanning the room before landing on their sad trio with that “I’ve got news” look. Bobby made to stand but Dean placed a hand on his chest and got up instead.

The doctor rattled off a slew of medical jargon that Dean understood the gist of before finishing with the only words that really mattered to Dean: “He’s stable, and he’ll make a full recovery, but it’ll be a little while before we can let you in to see him. If you wanted to go home—”

Dean shook his head. “We’re staying.”

The doctor shrugged. “A nurse will be out when you can see him.”

Dean nodded numbly and mumbled a gruff “thanks.” The doctor retreated back through the swinging doors. Dean’s eyes found Bobby and Y/N settled against the far wall looking at him eagerly. They were exhausted, but okay, and he flashed them a thumbs-up and what he could manage of a grin. He took the opportunity to slip out through the automatic doors and walked a few feet away to lean against the side of the building. He flipped his collar up against the wind and took out Y/N’s phone.   
It rang only twice before she answered, voice muffled with sleep.

“Dean?”  
  
“Hey, Lis.”  
  
“It’s almost two a.m. Is everything okay?”  
  
“Yeah. We got Sam.”  
  
“Yeah? How is he?”  
  
“He should make it.”

“Good. What about you?”

He turned his head from side to side, feeling the tension in his neck roll out across his shoulders. “It’s just...it’s a lot. All of this.” He paused and then added, because he meant it and because he felt like he should,  “I’m sorry I’m not home.”

“Hey, no,” she said, sounding more awake now. “You need to be with Sam. I get it.”

He blew out a long breath, wondering for the thousandth time how he deserved her. “I’ll be home as soon as I can.”

“I know,” she said. “But take your time, okay?”

“Yeah. Go back to sleep.”

He heard the smile in her voice. “Good night, Dean.”

“Good night.”

He went back inside and returned to his seat, dropping the phone in Y/N’s lap. “Doc said we can see him soon,” he muttered.

“Kid’s a fighter,” Bobby said. “Knew he’d pull through.”

Y/N was silently picking at a loose thread on the chair cushion. Dean thought about asking if she was okay, but he realized what a bullshit question that was and settled on patting her on the shoulder. The corners of her lips turned up just slightly at the gesture.

Forty-five minutes later a nurse approached them, wearing a tired smile. “He isn’t awake,” she said, “and he’ll be out for awhile. But if you want to see him, I can let you in for a few minutes.”

They filed behind her and shuffled through the doors to recovery and Sam’s room. Dean steeled himself the way he always had to for these visits. No matter how many times they’d been here—and he’d lost count—it never got easier.

But it wasn’t as bad as he’d thought. Sam was hooked to the usual monitors, and they all beeped a confident, steady beat. They hadn’t needed to intubate him, and Dean felt a swell of pride at that— _of course they didn’t, kid’s got lungs like a racehorse_ _—_ and without that mess on his face he looked OK. His torso was wrapped from his armpits to his waist, hiding what had to be hundreds of stitches. The cuts on his arms were open, but clean. He was still too pale, but he had more color than he’d had when they’d found him.

He stretched out a hand without even thinking about it and gently ruffled Sam’s hair, something he hadn’t done in decades, something Sam wouldn’t have let him do if he were awake. Dean caught himself and wondered what instinct had woken up to make him do it, and shook his head.

He lost time, just standing there next to the bed and the wires and the monitors, just staring at his brother and thinking that, really, it wouldn’t have mattered if he’d lost an arm, or an eye, or had his face burned off, because he was standing there _looking at his brother_ for the first time in a year and a half. He was alive, and in a little while he’d open his eyes and Dean would hear his voice and it didn’t matter that Y/N said he wasn’t the same Sam. He was here. Dean felt like he could breathe easier just knowing that.

“Dean?”

He shook himself and managed to break his gaze long enough to look at Bobby, who was standing across from him, a hand on the bed’s metal guardrail. Y/N was a few steps beyond the foot of the bed, her eyes flitting from one face to the next, to the blanket, the curtains, the walls and back. Dean made a mental note to check in on her.

“Yeah? What?”

“I asked if you were planning on staying, or if I should.”

Dean turned and found the nurse in the doorway. “Can I?” His voice sounded smaller than he’d expected.

She nodded. “Just you, though,” she said.

Bobby shuffled from the side of the bed and clasped Dean on the shoulder. “We’re going back to the cabin,” he said. “Listen, you call if you need anything, okay?” He lowered his voice and leaned in so only Dean could hear. “I don’t trust that he’s safe here. Anything happens, you call and we’ll bust him out, you hear?”

“Yeah.”

Bobby gave him a fatherly pat and went out. Y/N turned to follow him, but Dean reached out and touched her arm. “You didn’t want to stay, did you?”

She glanced at Sam and then back at Dean. Damn, she looked tired. “No. If only one of us can then...I don’t want to be here alone when he wakes up.”

Not for the first time, he wondered what force could have changed his brother so profoundly that Y/N could be afraid of him. She’d stood up to Lucifer without flinching right at the end, but something about Sam had shaken her in the last weeks. Sam had been at his worst with Ruby—fearless, wrathful, power-hungry—and they’d all been afraid, but even then it had been more fear _for_ him than _of_ him. So what was he now?

“You call if you need me,” he said. “And salt the damn windows when you get home. Keep the Colt on you.”

She raised her eyebrows at him. “Dean, really?”

He opened his mouth to protest, but let it go and turned around to scoot the armchair closer to the bed. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Yeah.” She cast one quick glance at Sam and then followed Bobby out of the room.

Dean didn’t expect to sleep. How many times had he _actually_ succeeded at that when Dad or Bobby or Sam had been hurt? The only time he’d ever truly slept in a hospital was when he’d been the one in there, and that was plenty. No, he’d sit and watch bad TV and wait.

But he did drift off. He hadn’t had a solid night’s sleep since before leaving Sioux Falls, and his head slumped on his chest and he fell into a light sleep, lulled by the ever beeping monitors, until the hoarse rasp of his own name pulled him back out.

“Dean? … Dean.”

He started awake, leaned over the bed and clutched at Sam’s forearm. “Hey, Sammy. Welcome back.” He tried to grin and failed miserably.

Sam blinked slowly, his brows knit together in confusion. “You’re...not supposed to be here.”

“What’re you talking about? ‘Course I am! My brother’s in the hospital, where else would I be?”

His heart was pounding. The relief he felt was almost drowned by an unexpected discomfort, like the floor had dropped from beneath him and he was grasping at anything he could to stay grounded. Everything about this reunion felt wrong, and he floundered to hide it behind his usual quips. He clutched at normal as best as he could.

Sam shifted and groaned, a hand going to his head and pushing his hair back. “You’re supposed to be with Lisa.”

“I will be,” Dean said, desperate to say whatever he needed to to reassure Sam that everything was going to be fine, that despite how angry and hurt he was that Sam hadn’t come to him as soon as he’d gotten topside, it didn’t matter. Dean would fade into the background again if it made Sam happy. Whatever it took. Whatever he needed. “Just making sure you get put back together.” More than physically, too, Dean thought. He was watching, wary of anything “off” about Sam, waiting for signs of the not-Sam Y/N had talked about.

Sam closed his eyes, took a few deep breaths, wincing as they stretched his stitches, and then looked at Dean again. “What happened? How’d you get me out?”

 _There_ was his little brother. He smiled. “Cas and Bobby distracted most of the them, Y/N and I went in and destroyed the sigils, Cas flew in and zapped us out.”

He watched Sam work that out, saw him calculate and play it over in his head. “Did any of them escape?”

“Don’t worry about that.”

Sam shot him a look so reminiscent of his old bitch faces that Dean almost felt okay. “At least one of them. Some chick.”

Sam sighed. “They’ll be back, then.” He closed his eyes again.

Dean shrugged. “Then we’ll take care of them when they show up,” he said. Sam didn’t respond, and Dean leaned over him and saw that he’d fallen asleep again. He settled back in the chair, pulled his coat around him and closed his own eyes.

* * *

 

The hospital wanted to keep Sam another day or two for observation, but as soon as he woke up and had eaten the next day, Sam was insistent on getting out of there. Dean was wary, but he understood. If anything came for them at the hospital, they’d be limited in defenses. They both knew that from experience.

Dean called Bobby and the hospital made sure they knew that they were leaving against professional advice as Sam was discharged. Dean wheeled him to the front and they waited just inside the doors—and out of the damn New England cold.

Bobby pulled up alone in the Chevelle and Sam stood on shaky legs as he came around the side of the car. Bobby halted just in front of him, eyes roving up and down, still in disbelief, and then he hugged him firmly, yet still mindful of his wounds. Sam clasped him back, though a little stiffly, Dean thought.

“About time I saw you again, you idjit.”

Sam nodded, apologized mechanically. Dean thought he should have looked more ashamed, but maybe he misread him.

Bobby tossed Dean the keys and after helping Sam into the front, he slid into the back and Dean took his place behind the wheel and pulled away from the building and out of the parking lot.

It should have felt better, he thought. It should have felt like home, driving with Sam beside him again and Bobby in the back, but it didn’t. It reminded him of the time just after he’d come back from Hell—something was out of place, something wasn’t clicking.

He turned up the radio to fill the silence and then asked, “Where’s Y/N?” And shouldn’t Sam have been the one wondering that?

“Still sleeping,” Bobby said. Dean glanced at his watch. It was twelve-thirty. Bobby met Dean’s eyes in the rearview mirror and silently told him not to press the matter, not right now.

Dean nodded. “Can’t say I blame her. Rough night.” He watched Sam out of the corner of his eyes for his reaction, but Sam only shrugged and said, “I told her not to come back.”

Dean had to fight to keep his mouth from falling open or his eyes from flying out of his head. He glanced in the mirror again and saw similar disbelief on Bobby’s face. He wasn’t sure if he was more appalled or angry...or maybe he was scared.

Back at the cabin, they helped Sam inside and lowered him onto the couch. Y/N was standing in the kitchen, staring into the fridge as she ate stale pretzels from a half-empty bag. She shut the door and turned around when they entered, looking into the living room at Sam with a strange expression on her face.

Sam met her gaze, seeming to study her. “You okay?” he asked.

She nodded, her expression still confused, and asked, tentatively, “How are _you_?”

Something wasn’t right. Something less right than even this situation called for. Dean felt coiled, ready to spring or snap if he had to. He rebelled internally at how unsteady every fucking thing felt, but forced himself to stay calm.

He shrugged and then winced. “Been better. Tired.” He moved to push himself up and Dean was at his side, putting a hand under his arm to steady him. “I think I’ll sleep some more, actually.”

Dean helped him back into the bedroom, made sure he was comfortable, then shut the door and came back out. Y/N had found a can of tuna fish and was eating it plain from the can. Bobby was unpacking the weapons on the kitchen table.

“What was that about?” Dean asked, crossing his arms and leaning against the counter.

“What was what about?” she asked.

Dean rolled his eyes. “Don’t give me that. You? Sam? Something you wanna tell me?”

She dug the spoon in for the last of the tuna and then tossed the can in the trash. “It’s just weird, that’s all.”

He swore she was lying, and it irritated the hell out of him, but he was too damn tired to fight it.

“So,” Bobby said. He was rubbing the Colt down with gun oil. “It’s a bit cramped for four people.”

“There’s an air mattress in the closet,” Y/N offered. Then she added, “If it works.”

“Well listen, I’ll stay as long as you three need me, but I’ve had calls rolling in all morning from hunters too stupid to take care of their own business. But I’m not liking this situation at all. None of us should stay here any longer than we have to. It’s not safe.”

“They think we’re dead, Bobby,” Y/N said.

Bobby scoffed. “Really? The Winchesters plus one? There’s gotta be some high-level demon behind his, and you know he won’t believe _that_ unless he sees a body. Word’ll get around.”

Dean sighed and sank into a chair, rubbing a hand down his face. This was looking more and more like a long-term job, like get-back-into-the-life long, and he knew he couldn’t, didn’t want to, do that. “We’ve got a few days, at least,” he said. “Long enough for Sam to get back on his feet. Then we’ll move or...whatever.”

Bobby watched him carefully and then stopped cleaning the Colt’s chamber to point the cleaning rod at him. “I know he’s your brother, Dean, but don’t let that that get in the way. Something ain’t right here.” He looked at Y/N. “Right?”

She nodded.

“I know,” Dean said, defensive. “I’m keeping an eye on him, alright?”

Bobby looked at him warily and went back to the Colt. “If he’s okay when he wakes up, I might take off tonight.”

Sam slept most of the day, then got up on his own around seven, shuffling unsteadily into the living room just after Dean got back with an armful of pizzas. “Figures the smell of bacon would wake you up,” Dean snorted, and Sam smirked and slowly lowered himself into a chair, wincing as he did. He glanced across the room and saw Bobby’s duffel by the door.

“Leaving already?” he asked, eyebrows raised.

Bobby shrugged and gestured to Sam. “You seem like you’re okay, and I’ve got a metric ton of work to catch up on. Might see what I can research about this Horn of Gabriel thing, too.”

Sam nodded. “By the way,” he said, turning to Y/N, “Have you seen Cas?”

“What, since he got us out of the warehouse?”

“Fuck Cas,” Dean interjected, causing Sam to stop with a slice of pizza halfway to his mouth and gape at his brother. “He’s the reason we’re all in this mess,” he continued, by way of explanation.

“I haven’t seen him since the night I ran. I need to know about the Horn.”

“Forget the Horn!” Dean snapped. The last thing he wanted was Sam having anything more to do with heaven and hell and anything in between the two. He thought the further his brother was from any of that, the better.

Sam’s expression was combative, but he dropped it. Too tired, Dean thought, and he knew he’d prefer the fight over the silence.

“I’m gonna head out,” Bobby announced, pushing away from the table. When Sam made to stand, Bobby placed a firm hand on his shoulder. “Stay put,” he said. “And stay safe, y’hear?” He gave Sam’s shoulder a squeeze and then pulled Dean and Y/N in before grabbing another slice of pizza for the road, shouldering his bag, and leaving, waving a hand in farewell as the door swung shut behind him.

They ate quietly for awhile, and Dean felt absolutely smothered by the silence. He’d have given just about anything for the three of them to sit with the ease they used to. He told himself not to rush it, that they’d been in a similar spot before and made it through. They could do it again.

But it was too heavy, and he got up and grabbed his coat off the back of the armchair. “I need some air,” he said, and walked outside.

He’d only gone a few paces from the cabin and into the trees when he heard the door squeal open and bang shut behind him. He turned around and saw Y/N trotting across the grass.

“Mind if I join you?” she asked.

He shrugged and grunted. There was a deer path that wound around the perimeter of the treeline, and he began following it. “You doing okay? Something’s weird with you.”

“I just don’t want to be alone with him, you know?”

“I get that. What else?”

He thought she was on the verge of telling him, when there was a rustling just behind them and they both whipped around. He cursed himself for not bringing the Colt, but Y/N flashed the knife before them.

Their fear was unfounded, and Dean heaved a sigh of relief when he saw it was just Castiel. He’d been healed since they’d last seen him, though he didn’t look in his prime, as far as Dean could tell. He felt a flash of anger.

“Dean, Y/N,” he said. “Where’s Sam?”

“Inside,” Dean said. “And I swear to God, Cas, if you don’t get your ass in there and fix him I will--”

“I wish I could,” he said dismissively, then changed tracks, “None of you are safe here. You need to leave.”

“And go where?” Y/N snapped. Dean felt the smallest trace of satisfaction that she was as defensive as he was.

“I have a place for you. You’ll be safe there until we make our next move.”

Dean could have hit him. “Our next move?!” he barked. “Not our job, Cas.”

The angel raised an eyebrow. “You won’t help your brother?”

“It’s not his job, either! He saved the world already. He’s done. We’re done. I don’t care about your Horn problem. If anything, _you_ need to help _us_!”

Castiel reached into his pocket and handed Dean a small wooden box, just slightly longer than a deck of cards. It was intricately carved on top in the shape of a strange, stretched six-pointed star, made up of a center diamond and two smaller, concave triangles joining at the sides. He ran his finger over it; the line was one continuous path.

“The hell is this?” he demanded.

“The location is inside. Meet me there in twenty-four hours.” He looked between Dean and Y/N’s bewildered expressions, and then said, “You shouldn’t be so quick to judge, Dean. Sam may need me more than you know.” He disappeared.

“Great.” Dean turned the box over in his hand. He held it out to Y/N. “You want this? Because I’m done.”

She took it and examined it in the dim light. “Look,” she said, and she pulled on the top of it, sliding the front off and revealing a large, bronze, antique-looking key. She picked it up, rubbed it beneath her fingers, and put it back, then turned the lid over and picked up a tea-colored, flimsy slip of paper. She lifted it close to her eyes and squinted. “It’s in Lebanon, Kansas,” she said.

Dean had moved a few paces away, but he stopped walking and moved back toward her. He took the box and paper from her and put it back together and slipped it into his pocket. He was at a complete loss of what to do here. He wanted to go back to Cicero, back to Lisa, and put this behind him again, but more and more that was looking unlikely. And Cas had said they weren’t safe, which meant Sam wasn’t safe, which meant...He closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, Y/N was looking at him expectantly. “What do you think?” he asked.

“We should go,” she said. She sounded ten times more confident than he felt, and he cocked his head.

“Is this one of those empathy impulse things, or are you just that curious?”

“I think so,” she said. “I think we need to go.”

“Fine,” he said grudgingly. “Then let’s go.”

They went back inside. Sam was reclining in the chair, a hefty book open in his lap. “We’re leaving,” Dean said. He dropped the box into Sam’s lap.

“And going where? What’s this?” Sam picked up the box, clearly confused. “A unicursal hexigram?” He slid open the box and pulled out the key, squinting at it in confusion.

“Kansas, apparently,” Dean answered. “Should take us something like 20 hours to get there, and we can still have time to stop in Indiana. You got everything you need?”

“Everything I have is here,” he said. “You want to tell me what’s going on?”

Dean filled him in as he and Y/N packed up the few things they’d unpacked and took them out to the car. When they were done, Dean helped Sam get situated in the front and Y/N climbed into the swivel seat in the back and then, once again, they were on the road, heading back West.


	16. Chapter 16

 

Dean didn’t think he’d ever been in such a long, uncomfortable car ride as the one from Atlantic City to Cicero, and he’d been in plenty, especially when Sam was in high school and had been fighting with their father.

Except, this was worse. Because at least then, there’d been anger. Now, there wasn’t even that. There was a lot of nothing. Sam wasn’t much of a conversationalist anymore, and Y/N was just so... _ hesitant _ around him that she hardly talked to Dean, either. She slept most of the drive, anyway, cramped up against the window in the back, and Dean realized he’d need to switch cars. He wasn’t sure if he was ready for that. 

Dean tried. He asked Sam what he’d been doing for a year and a half, even though he knew, and he did his best not to sound accusatory or angry or hurt. But Sam just gave bottom-line answers. One sentence,  _ maybe _ two, and Dean wanted to snap at him to fucking elaborate but he bit it all back and turned up the music and drove.

It was a relief to reach the house the following morning. Dean had been unsure of Sam, but he’d pulled Y/N aside and she promised him that Sam wasn’t a danger to Lisa or Ben. When he called Lisa to explain everything, she insisted everyone come so she could make sure they ate something other than diner food for a change. 

When they pulled up in front of the house, Ben burst out the door and ran down the driveway and wrapped his arms around Dean’s waist. It caught Dean off-guard. Last time he checked, Ben was too cool for hugs. 

“Hey, Ben,” he said, returning the embrace. “Wait, shouldn’t you be at school?”

“I told him he could play hooky today.” 

Lisa was smiling at him from the front door, and he grinned back at her and checked over his shoulder. Sam and Y/N were standing by the car, waiting for some cue, trying not to intrude. “Come on,” he told them, and the four of them walked up to the front door. “Ben, you remember Sam, right?”

Ben nodded, but seemed reluctant to engage with the younger Winchester. Dean didn’t know what Lisa had told him, wasn’t sure whether Ben was processing how Sam could be here and alive or what was going on, but he couldn’t blame the kid. Then again, Sam looked a little worse for the wear; he’d been drawing looks at every stop they’d taken, even with the worst of the damage covered by his shirt.

They’d reached the porch, and Lisa put her arms around him and kissed him and Dean wished he could just stay in those arms for the rest of his life. He lingered just a little longer than usual and pulled away. 

Lisa peered around him to look at Sam and smiled warmly, then surprised all of them by stepping forward and hugging Sam, too. “It’s good to see you, Sam,” she said.

Sam awkwardly patted her back. “You too, Lisa.”

“Lisa, Ben, this is Y/N, Sam’s — uh — ”  _ Well, fuck. Way to plan for that one. _ “She’s our friend.”

Ben made a face, but Lisa just took it in stride, shaking Y/N’s hand and welcoming all of them in. “Come on,” she said. “I know you don’t have long, but the food’s ready.”

She wasn’t kidding about that; Dean hadn’t seen that table so full since last Thanksgiving. She’d heaped it with plates of pancakes, bowls of fruit and eggs, bacon, sausage, toast...Dean moaned just at the sight of it.

“Wow, Lisa...thank you!” Y/N marveled. Sam nodded his agreement behind her.

“You guys are just lucky you caught me the day after I went shopping.”

They sat down to eat, just settling into whatever chairs. Ben took a seat next to Dean and wouldn’t move until everyone else was seated, like he was afraid of losing that spot. It didn’t go unnoticed by Dean or Lisa, and they exchanged a knowing glance across the table. 

Breakfast was surprisingly comfortable, Dean thought, but then, that was Lisa. She was good at small talk the way he never had been nor would be. She chatted about what had been going on in the past week (had it only been a week since he’d left? It felt like a lifetime), she asked Y/N about Costa Rica and even managed to get some background from before she’d entered the life, and she went right on and asked Sam how he’d been doing, like he’d been on an extended business trip. Which, in some twisted way, he kind of had.

It was too short. They insisted on helping with cleanup, and Lisa reluctantly let them. Sam, Ben and Y/N were just finishing up dishes when Dean managed to slip away with Lisa. He pulled her close, wrapping one arm around the small of her back and another holding the back of her head, burying his face in her hair as he breathed her in and held her.

Her arms rubbed soothing circles into the tight muscles of his back. “I missed you too,” she said. 

He sighed, held her a minute more, and then stepped back. He kept his hands on her arms and gently rubbed up and down from her shoulders to her elbows. “I have to take him to this place in Kansas,” he said. “And then I’ll be back. I promise.”

Her expression was difficult to read. She was understanding, and glad to hear his promise, but there was something else there, too. Maybe doubt, he thought, but it didn’t feel that sinister.

“Just be careful, okay? Ben worries about you.”

Dean rubbed his hand across his eyes. “I’m sure he’s not the only one, either.” He sighed. “I’m sorry, Lis.”

She nodded, tight-lipped, and glanced over her shoulder, checking on the trio in the kitchen. “He’s different.”

Dean blinked. “Ben?”

She rolled her eyes and shoved him playfully. “No, your brother.”

It both worried and encouraged Dean that she’d noticed that. “Different how?”

Lisa pursed her lips, her brows drawing together. “He’s just...cold? I don’t know what...everything...must have done to him, but...he used to be warm, you know?”

Dean nodded. She wasn’t even a little off.

“Just...whatever you need to do, come back in one piece, okay?”

“I will.”

“And Dean? Take my car, and let someone else drive. You look like you haven’t slept in days.”

He chuckled. She wasn’t wrong about that, either. He leaned in and kissed her. “Okay,” he said. “I guess we’re leaving.”

He walked back into the kitchen. Y/N was talking to Ben about video games while they wiped down the table. Sam was nowhere to be found.

“He’s outside,” Y/N said, anticipating his question. “Said he was ready when we were.”

Dean snorted. “Course he is.” He dug in his pocket and handed Lisa his keys, then picked hers up from the counter. He tossed them to Y/N. She fumbled them out of the air in surprise. “I need a nap,” he explained, “and the truck’s cramped.” When he saw the grin spread across her face he added, “Don’t get used to it!”

She practically skipped to the front door.  _ At least that’s one thing I’ve done right lately _ , he thought. He turned to Ben. 

“I’ll be back in a few days, tops,” he said. “I just have to drop Sam off in Kansas, and I’ll be back. Okay?”

“Yeah, okay,” Ben replied. He was sullen.

“Hey,” Dean said, bending down to Ben’s eye level. “I’m fine, alright? Just have to take care of some family business. I’m coming back. I swear.”

Ben nodded. “I’ll see you in a few days.”

Dean clapped him on the back. “That’s the spirit,” he said. He threw his coat over his arm and turned to Lisa. “Just a couple days,” he promised again.

She pulled him to her and kissed him again, longer than before, and then pulled away and playfully smacked him on the ass. “Get out of here,” she teased.

He winked and met Sam and Y/N at Lisa’s Camry. Sam was already in the front seat, but Y/N was waiting by the driver’s side. “You sure?” she asked.

Dean waved a hand. “Get in before I change my mind.” He climbed into the back, balled up his coat and laid it down against the driver’s side door as she started the car. He stuck his hand out the window and waved to Lisa and Ben on the porch as they pulled away from the curb, then rolled up the window and laid down with his head on his coat and fell asleep before they’d even made it to the highway.

* * *

I  _ loved _ driving.

Lisa’s Toyata Camry wasn’t the Impala, and wasn’t as much fun as the truck would have been, but there was something both relaxing and invigorating about being behind the wheel and  _ not _ fearing for my life. Dean and I shared that much in common, even if my absolute lack of car-knowledge and my tendency to ride the brakes a little too hard drove him crazy. 

Despite the December chill, I cracked the window for some fresh air and scanned the radio for something other than classic rock. Dean’s music tastes were fantastic, but I could only take so many hours of the same thing. The radio picked up a holiday station, and I lingered a moment, wondering how it could already be December. I was supposed to be visiting Roberto’s family in La Fortuna soon, but Costa Rica already felt like a lifetime ago. I let “Silver Bells” continue playing and tried not to beat myself up over never e-mailing him an update….or an excuse. Or an apology.

Sam shifted in the passenger seat and made some noncommittal, possibly amused noise. “Christmas music?” he asked, incredulous.

I glanced at him from the corner of my eye. He made me uneasy, but at least when he was still and silent I could pretend he wasn’t there. 

He was, still, the missing, crucial piece in this overly complicated jigsaw puzzle. Nothing that had happened in the past month made much sense, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that if I could at least pin Sam down, at the very least figure out what had happened to him and why he was the way he was, the rest would follow.

“It  _ is  _ only three weeks until Christmas,” I said. 

“So?”

I sighed. It was like making small talk with a brick wall. I didn’t see a point in responding and just kept driving.

After awhile, he said, “I’m sorry, you know.”

It was my turn to look incredulous. “What?”

“About...all of that. Back in New Jersey. I shouldn’t have handed you over.”

I felt my eyebrows disappear in my hairline and opened my mouth to reply. I only managed a surprised, “Oh.” A part of me wanted to snap about that sad excuse for an apology; another part wanted to jump on him for thinking an apology was sufficient, and a bigger part was still so angry at and afraid of him that I wanted to ignore it and move on.

But even more than anger and fear, I just felt sorrow. So I said, “No, you’re not.”

I expected an argument and was surprised yet again. He ran a hand through his hair and looked out of the window. “No,” he admitted. “I’m not.”

I didn’t even try to mask my astonishment. “Why? How is that possible?”

He shrugged, seemingly untroubled by this insane admission. “I dunno,” he said simply. “I know it was wrong, and as soon as it got bad enough, I knew I had to get you out before it went any farther. But I didn’t... _ care. _ I just knew it was what I was supposed to do.”

I felt myself involuntary shift away from him, a slight flinching toward the door, and I glanced in the rearview mirror at Dean, partially hoping he’d been awake to hear that and could verify the insanity of Sam’s statement.

But he was asleep, half on his stomach, left arm curled under his head and the right dangling to the floor.

Sam followed my gaze. “By the way...I thought you weren’t going to involve him in this.”

I tightened my grip on the steering wheel. “I didn’t want to. I didn’t know who else to call.”

“Bobby?”

I couldn’t figure him out, and the conversation was exhausting, so I opted for honesty. “I was scared.”

He nodded. “I guess I don’t blame you for that.”

_ Oh, good. I was worried. _

WHAM’s “Last Christmas” started playing on the radio, and I reached forward and snapped it off. “So how much of the last month was real, Sam?”

“What do you mean?”

I shrugged. “You were at least  _ trying _ to act like yourself. Or was that part of the plan, too?” He raised his eyebrows and rolled his shoulders, and I added, “Seriously. I’m not trying to point fingers, I’m just trying to figure you out.”

He shrugged, too. “I guess I was just going through the motions. I guess that’s what I’ve  _ been _ doing.”

I swallowed. “Is that why you didn’t give me Brian’s key, too?”

There’d been no time to accuse or mourn the loss of my friend, but that detail, the empty cage and the dark stain on the concrete, had lurked behind my thoughts since we’d rescued Sam.

Sam glanced away, watching the midwest countryside. “I hadn’t even thought about him, honestly. I was just worried about getting you out.”

And the thing was — the real bitch of the situation — was that line could have been sincere. It could have been something old Sam would have said and meant entirely, and it was the kind of admission that years ago would have sent me running to him. But he hadn’t done what he’d done out of love, he’d done it out of duty. He hadn’t neglected Brian to keep me safe, he’d ignored him because he wasn’t important enough to save.

The next hour of silence turned the car into a sauna — thick and suffocating. When Dean finally woke up, we were just past Springfield, Illinois, and after a quick stop he was happy to be back behind the wheel and I was relieved to retreat into the backseat. From there, it was a steady straight shot West to the address Castiel had left us.

* * *

We pulled off the highway and made our way down a series of winding state roads before crossing a river and rolling to a dead step on an asphalt road. We were in a patch of woods not far from a river, and towering over us on a hill was a WPA powerplant, grey and dark and reminiscent of some gothic manor.

“What the hell, Cas?” Dean muttered, getting out of the car and slamming the door. Sam and I climbed out after him.

At the base of the hill, beneath the power plant and just back from the road, a stone and metal circular door was set into the earth, reminding me, oddly, of a hobbit hole. If hobbit holes were made of concrete and brick and iron.

Cas, naturally, was nowhere to be found, and we were right on schedule. Dean pulled the box out of his pocket and took out the key, then walked down a set of stairs to reach the door. He stopped and turned around. 

“You coming?”

Sam and I glanced at one another and walked to him just as he was sliding the key into the lock and pushed the door open.

It opened to darkness, and Dean and Sam flipped on their flashlights. 

“Son of a bitch…” he marvelled.*

We were standing on balcony overlooking a circular room. Dean passed the beam over the walls, which were lined with dated-looking technology and gadgets and meters. 

“Look at this,” Sam said, shining his light on some of the machines. “Ham radio. Telegraph. Switchboard. It’s some kind of...communication center.”

Sam went forward down the stairs, studying the machines. Dean looked to the right where, in a small alcove, two leather armchairs sat on either side of a small table with a chessboard on top, the pieces placed partially through a game. Beside the board were an ashtray and a cup of coffee, stained as though it had sat, half-full, for years. 

“Halfway through their cup of coffee and a game of chess,” Dean said, tipping the cup toward him and then straightening and looking around. “It’s like whoever was manning the Hub left quick.” He found what he was looking for and crossed to a fuse box and popped it open. He paused for a split second, and then lifted one of the switches.

Electricity hummed through the room and ancient lights all around the walls flickered on. “That was...unexpected,” I said. We saw now that in addition to the ancient technology, in the center of the room stood a table with an illuminated map of the world. Dean nodded his agreement and flipped the second switch.

“Son of a bitch…” Sam said, turning and staring to the back of the room. Dean and I looked too, and then both hurried down the stairs to stand beside him, walking forward through the entryway.

Spread out before us was a library; long oak tables stood in the center of the room and shelves lined all four walls. The floor was a dark hard wood and it was lit overhead by warm, bright chandeliers. There were more of those leather armchairs placed comfortably around the room, too, and atop one of those shelves was a decorative (but also likely deadly) set of Samurai swords. Medieval helmets were displayed on another. A large card file stood on one side, and at the very far end of the room was a massive telescope. I felt like I’d time traveled back about fifty years. On several of the bookcases and floor tiles, even on some of the phones, was that same strange, six-pointed star. Where the hell  _ were _ we?

If I felt confused and surprised, Dean was all wonderment and awe. He stepped into the room, eyes wide and mouth agape. “Sammy, I think we found the Batcave.”

“It’s the headquarters of the Men of Letters.”

I think we all jumped. Castiel was at the top of the stairs, just inside the entrance. He shut the door and came down.

Dean tried to shake off his alarm. “What, you use doors now?”

But Sam’s curiosity was piqued. If one thing hadn’t changed about him, it was his intellect and natural spirit of inquiry. “The Men of Letters?”

Castiel had reached the library and was gazing around at the books as if he were an appraiser. “The Men of Letters were a secret organization of scholars,” he explained. “They researched, studied, and cataloged every aspect of the supernatural known to mankind.”

“They were hunters?” I asked.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “They saw hunters as necessary, but viewed their use of violence with contempt. The Men of Letters were skilled in rituals and well-versed in arcane knowledge, the demon world…members were initiated, though membership was primarily hereditary.”

“So this is their Batcave,” Dean repeated with a grin. Sam rolled his eyes.

Cas missed the reference. “It is a bunker. Here, they stored their collected knowledge of every object, scroll, and spell ever collected for thousands of years under one roof. It is the safest place on earth, warded against any evil ever created.”

I could have sworn Sam’s eyes nearly popped from their sockets and that his fingers twitched toward the shelves, ready to get his hands on any and all of their secrets. Instead he asked, “So how did we get the key, then?”

Castiel’s eyes roved over Sam and to Dean and back. “Because the two of you are legacies. I traveled back to 1958 and took the key from Henry Winchester just after he died. Your grandfather.”

The looked that passed between Sam and Dean — and the disbelief I registered from the eldest Winchester — was so pure and powerful it was almost comical. Dean almost babbled, “Our grandfather? You mean, our dad was — ”

“Henry died when your father was a boy, before he could teach him about the society. John knew nothing of the supernatural until your mother’s death, as you know.”

The three of us stood in a suspended silence for several long seconds. I cleared my throat. “I mean...it’s not the craziest thing that’s happened to any of us.” I gestured to Castiel as evidence.

“The bunker is yours,” Cas said. “After much discussion, we felt it necessary for your protection and for research as we search for the Horn. By birthright, it belongs to you.”

Sam found his voice. “What about the other Men of Letters?”

Cas blinked. “You’re all that’s left. They all were either killed or fled during an attack.”

I remembered the coffee cup in the entryway. 

The angel shifted. “I’ll leave you to investigate. There are plenty of files, I imagine you can find something useful about the Horn.” He went up the stairs and out the door.

Still absorbing this new information about their father, the boys and I spread out through the bunker, exploring every nook and cranny we could find. Down one long hallway we found a fully-equipped kitchen, and down another set of stairs was a firing range. Off the main hallway were a number of bedrooms and a bathroom with indoor plumbing and a large shower. The second level held a laboratory, and going down again we found another door that led to a garage full of what were now classic cars and motorcycles — rounded fenders and chrome bumpers and round headlights and all. 

In a room marked 7B we found shelves upon shelves of dusty archived files. After a quick inspection, Sam realized that two of the shelves pulled back revealing another room. The floor was completely covered by a devil’s trap and several sets of manacles etched with some sort of spellwork. “So, we have a dungeon,” Dean said. 

I stood between them and shook my head in disbelief. “We have a  _ bunker. _ ”

Sam raised his eyebrows. “We?”

Dean and I looked at him, confused.

He gave a little half-shrug. “I’m just saying — _ you’re _ not a Winchester, so you’re not really part of this.”

Dean did a double take; that statement, while true, rocked him. I just blinked. He wasn’t wrong, but it was cold.

“She’s family,” Dean insisted, and it sounded final. Sam just shrugged again, unconcerned. 

“Anyway,” he said. “I’m going to get started on the library, see what I can find out about this place. I’ll meet you guys later.” He left the dungeon casually.

When his footsteps had faded from earshot, Dean turned to me. “What the hell was that?”

“How should I know?” I asked. “I’m just as lost as you are with him.”

He didn’t say anything, just stared at me as though he was determined to find some answer in my head. Unwilling to think about it anymore, I turned toward the door. “Anyway,” I said, “I’m gonna grab my stuff and check out the water pressure, maybe pick a room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Starting with the * on, much of the dialogue about the bunker is taken either directly from the show, or adapted from descriptions on the Wiki. 
> 
> When I wrote this, I wanted it to be Season 6, and I wanted the bunker, so I made it work. Hopefully it doesn't feel too forced!
> 
> Thanks for reading!  
> -Ademas


	17. Chapter 17

As Y/N padded off down the hall, Dean stood in the center of the dungeon and stared around at the shelves upon shelves of file boxes, the massive Devil’s Trap, and the shackles, and wondered how in the hell he’d ended up back here.

Not here as in this exact location, obviously, though the fact that he and Sam had inherited a  _ bunker  _ from their father’s father would take him more than a few hours — and probably a few drinks — to wrap his head around. He was in awe of the place, and had they discovered it a few years ago, even, he’d have celebrated it a little differently. Back then he’d have given just about anything for something permanent, something like a home.

It would do for Sam, though, he thought. It would keep him safe, at the very least. He trusted he’d be okay here. As okay as he could be. 

Dean left the room, pulling the shelves back together to close off the dungeon, and snapped the light off before heading back down the hallway toward the library. Sam hadn’t shown exactly the aggression Y/N had warned him about, but the way he’d interacted with them both, the way he’d called her out for not being one of them….but then again, his perspective  _ had  _ to be warped if he’d been okay with everything he’d done in New Jersey.

He picked up his pace, little knots of anger spurring him forward. Between Sam’s hospital stay and Y/N being around them both constantly, he hadn’t had a chance to grill his brother about  _ that _ yet, and he was itching to lay into him, truth be told. This Sam was a lot like  _ Ruby’s _ Sam, and he’d seen enough of that shit to last him another two lifetimes, plus maybe three more in the Pit. 

Sam was bent over one of the tables in the library, a stack of books piled beside him and a large, dusty tome spread beneath his fingers. That  _ was _ typical Sam; they’d been there all of forty minutes and he was already geeking out over research.

“Let me guess, no  _ Busty Asian Beauties _ ?” He tried humor. Maybe it’d soften him.

Sam barely glanced up before shaking his head  _ as if it had been a serious question _ and turning a page in the book.

So that wasn’t going to work. Fine. They’d just get right to it.

“What the hell, man?”  
  
This time Sam _did_ look up, brows knit together in confusion. “What?”  
  
Dean almost rolled his eyes. “Oh, come on, Sam!”

Sam straightened and nodded once, slowly. “Oh. You’re talking about the demon thing.”

“No!” he snapped. “Not really — look, I get taking a job to get out of the Pit. I get helping Cas save the world. We’ve both been there. Hell, I even get keeping me out of it. But what you did?” He glanced over his shoulder down the hallway. He could hear the shower still running. “Letting a bunch of demons have her and then whatever you did — ”

“I did what I had to do to keep her safe.”  
  
Dean almost recoiled, convinced his brother had lost his damn mind. He almost hoped he had, wouldn’t blame him; after whatever he’d gone through with Lucifer, lunacy was the only real explanation for everything that he’d done topside.

“ _ Safe _ ? What, giving her to demons and torturing her is keeping her  _ safe _ ?”

Sam threw his hands out to the sides, defensive. “I didn’t have a choice, Dean! I had to keep up the act. It was the only way we were going to find the Horn and keep it away from them.”  
  
“Since when is putting family in danger okay? And don’t give me any of that ‘she’s not really family’ crap, because you know better than I do it’s more than blood.”

Sam met his glare with a cold and resolved one and challenged, “It’s what you would’ve done.”  
  
Dean set his jaw and shook his head.  “No, it’s what _Dad_ would’ve done.”

That’s when it hit him, when Dean realized how dramatically things had changed. Sam had always been the most like their father in mindset, but he’d never have acted on the impulses John had. Maybe Dean had once been the good son, the obedient little soldier, but only to the extent that was required to keep his brother fed and warm and safe. But it was Sam, now, who was putting work and objective before anything else, even his own family. Maybe they’d both changed in the year and a half apart. Maybe they’d both been changing even years before that. But they’d had one thing in common, one shared value, and that was that nothing was worth sacrificing family. 

Sam had started to say something, but stopped, looking over Dean’s shoulder as Y/N walked into the room. She slowed when she passed through the doorway, glancing back and forth between them and Dean knew and he  _ hated _ it that she could feel whatever unease was between them; nothing got past her and he  _ hated _ it.

She cleared her throat. “So, water pressure’s great. Good hot water, too, surprisingly.”

Sam pulled out a chair and sat back down, reaching for another book. “Good to know,” he said, not sounding genuinely interested whatsoever. He looked tired, Dean thought, and still weak. “I pulled out a few of the more obvious places to start researching the Horn,” Sam continued. “I know Cas wants us to get started as soon as we can.”

_ Obedient little soldier, _ echoed in Dean’s head, and everything inside of him wanted to grip his brother by the collar and shake him until he woke up because  _ Sam _ didn’t follow orders,  _ Sam _ got on a bus and ran across the country to do what  _ Sam _ wanted.

And then a voice in his head said,  _ But which one of you actually said ‘yes’? _ and he turned to Y/N and said, “Food run?” a little too enthusiastically.

She looked at him a little sideways but got the hint and nodded. “I need a few supplies, anyway.”

“Just grab me something,” Sam said from his books as they headed for the door.

Once they were in the car, Dean let out a long breath he hadn’t been aware of holding and Y/N turned to him with raised eyebrows and gave a little half-laugh, like she was trying to pretend she couldn’t feel his frustration. “So, uh, what was that about?” 

“What, you don’t know?” He started the engine and backed the car up so he could turn around. “I can’t figure him out,” he said. “I just...I know he went through hell — ” He considered his statement, shook his head, and corrected himself. “I mean  _ actual  _ Hell and then everything in New Jersey on top of that. And I feel like a goddamn creep asking about my brother’s feelings, but something isn’t right. So, tell me what’s going on with him.”

She got quiet.  _ Really _ quiet. She dipped her head and stared at her hands, one thumb rubbing small circles into her knee. She took a breath and said, “I don’t know.”

“What?”

“I can’t feel him.”

“What do you mean, you can’t feel him? You can feel me, right?”

She nodded. “I can. And other people, too. Bobby, Lisa, Ben. But Sam…There’s nothing there.”

Dean didn’t say anything.  _ That _ was information he wasn’t prepared for. It set him on edge. Y/N could always feel Sam. She could usually feel other people. She couldn’t feel monsters. “Why? What’s it mean?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. The last time I felt Sam was right before he said yes. I felt how absolutely terrified he was, then his resignation, and then nothing. Lucifer took control and he was gone. And then, in that graveyard, after Cas brought me back, I couldn’t feel anyone. So now that I can feel you, and anyone else I want to, but not him…”

“Something’s wrong with him.” He hadn’t wanted to admit it. Somehow, saying it out loud made it more true. Sam was alive, but he wanted his brother back.

She must have been relieved to hear him say that because he saw her physically relax in the passenger seat. “You’ve noticed it too. I was worried it was just me.”

He rubbed his eyes and pulled into the parking lot of a Jiffy Burger. “If it was just me and him, maybe I could have overlooked it, or maybe I would’ve ignored it on purpose,” he said.  _ Hell knows I’ve ignored worse things before... _ “But even without what you just told me...just watching him with you...No, something’s not right. Human or not...he isn’t my brother.”

She bit her lip. “So what’re we going to do?”

“I dunno,” he admitted, and settled against the seat. “I can’t stay. I can’t start this again; I’m done, and I need to go back.” He felt torn between two families; he should have been able to celebrate Sam’s return and he couldn’t. Maybe if Sam were Sam. Maybe if there wasn’t another world-shattering plot the angels wanted him involved in. But he had to be done. He couldn’t fall back into it; he refused to. “Sam’s human, and as much as I want to fix him…” he sighed and shook his head. “I was pretty fucked when I came back, and I wasn’t doing a tango with Lucifer and Michael. I can’t get my head around what that must’ve done to him.”

She sighed, put her hand on the door as if to open it, but paused. “Maybe you’re right. I hadn’t started the empath thing until months after you were back, so who knows if it would’ve been the same for you, too.”

They were kidding themselves. He knew it, and he was pretty sure Y/N did, too. They were just trying to convince each other that Y/N not able to have any connection to Sam meant nothing. Everything was fine. Just  _ fine _ . 

“Anyway,” Dean said, opening the door. “What you do is up to you. I’ll stay another day or so, and then go, I think.”

She followed suit and shut her door, then stared at him over the top of the car. “If you go, I can’t stay here.”

He’d figured as much. “Wouldn’t expect you to.”  _ And wouldn’t want you to _ , he thought. “You never signed up for Camp Angel. They can want your help, but they can’t make you do jack. Remember that.”

“Yeah. And with Sam here…”

They started walking toward the restaurant. “If you need a place to stay, Lisa’s got a guest room — ”

She cut him off with a sharp shake of her head. “No. Thanks but...it’s probably better if we split. Cas knows where you’ll be — that we can’t avoid. But we’re all still technically hidden from the angels, remember? If I go off on my own, they’ll have a hard time finding me and dragging me back. Again.”

Unconsciously, his hand went to his chest and pressed against his ribs. It had been a long time since he’d thought about the angel warding Cas had carved into them, meant to protect them from Lucifer, but now protecting Y/N from Cas. 

He still didn’t like the thought of her off on her own again. “Demons can still find you, though.”

She didn’t respond, so they went inside and ordered burgers and fries and a chocolate milkshake and took a seat to wait for their food. 

“I can’t convince you, can I?”

She shook her head. “I need to try to start over again, I think.”

That was something he understood, too. “Where?”

“I don’t know. West, I guess. I have some friends scattered around out there.”

“I can drive you,” he said without thinking. He was unsure what prompted the offer. Maybe he wasn’t ready to lose touch just yet; maybe he was just overprotective.

She raised her eyebrows. “That’s the exact opposite of where you’re going.”

“I can drive you.” He insisted this time, and realized he was scared for her, and hoped maybe he could change her mind, or at least make sure she had a good setup.

“Dean,” she said. “Think about it. If you know where I am, you’re the first person Cas will go to when he decides he wants to chase me down for this Horn bullshit. If you don’t know, he can leave you alone and won’t be any closer to finding me. And if not Cas, then any demons…”

The thought of demons entering his home and threatening him or Lisa or Ben had his hands curling into fists. He had to breathe them back open. “I can’t tell them if I don’t know. Right. Okay. But listen. You need to stay in touch, and you need to stay smart. Devil’s traps, salt lines...you need some weapons, iron, take — ”

She was looking at him with a half-smirk and a quirked eyebrow, and he stopped mid- sentence. “What?!” he blurted.

“I know I’m not you or Sam or Bobby, but I’m not an idiot.”

He huffed and their food arrived. He grabbed the bags and passed Y/N her milkshake. “At least let me give you some contacts out there.”

She rolled her eyes. “Dean, I need to disappear from the life — ”

“Just in case!” he snapped. He wasn’t angry, not really, but he’d be damned if he didn’t do everything he could to make sure she was safe. That was the least he could do. 

“Okay, okay, fine,” she said, taking the bags from him and getting into the car. 

“Truth is,” Dean said, pulling back onto the road. “Cas and Sam both seem to think that we’re in this for the long run. I don’t know what kind of resistance he’s going to give us, but we’re leaving together. I’ll get you somewhere, or get you a car, before I leave you with him.”

“Yeah. Good point. Thanks.”

They stopped once on the way back to pick up a few cases of beer. Back at the bunker, they spread the food across the kitchen table and popped open the beers, the three of them sitting down surprisingly comfortably. Sam even remarked that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had Jiffy Burger, sounding a little like his old self. 

It was a short-lived peace, though. “So,” he said. “The Men of Letters don’t have a lot on the Horn that I’ve found, at least not in these books and not in a way that’s clearly labeled. I’m still trying to figure out their system. I thought, Y/N, you might be able to help me with  that since you’ve got the background in library science.”

Dean didn’t need to be an empath to feel the discomfort that passed between him and Y/N. They exchanged a glance over the table.

Sam didn’t miss it. “What?” 

Dean heaved a sigh. “Look, Sam...I’m leaving.”

“You’re leaving.” It wasn’t a question. It was a judgment.

“Yeah, I am. I’ve got a life outside of this one. I’ve gotta get back to them.”

Sam scoffed, but then nodded. “I get it, but...Dean, you’re a good hunter. One of the best. I could really use you here.”

“Well, I think you’ve got it handled,” he grunted. Sam’s flattery wasn’t sincere, even if it would have been at one point, he knew. 

Sam picked up his beer and tipped it in Y/N’s direction. “Guess it’s just us,” he said, eyeing her a little warily, Dean thought, maybe with a warning. He took a long pull from his beer and she announced, “I’m leaving too.”

The way Sam almost choked and barely covered it with an incredulous snort would have been comical in any other situation. Dean would have teased him about it in the past.

“What?!” he blurted. “But we  _ need _ you! Dean we can make it without but you’re...you’re a pretty big piece in this, remember?”

She shrugged. Dean was impressed with how unattached she seemed. “I remember Team Free Will,” she said. “I’m not forced into this. None of us are, Sam. And I’m not going to stay here and do this.”

“So instead you’re going to….? What?”

Dean watched him carefully. Sam’s eyes were just a little wild, just a little too-flared for Dean to be completely at ease around him. And while Y/N couldn’t actually feel whatever Sam was feeling, she could sense he was reaching a threshold, and she got up from the table. “I’ll figure it out,” she said simply. She grabbed her trash and threw it into the can in the corner before leaving the kitchen.

 

* * *

 

Back in “my” room, or the room I was using for the next night or so, I found a copy of a magazine called  _ Popular Science _ from March of 1958 and I rolled onto my stomach on the bed to read it. It was in surprisingly good shape and a welcome distraction. I flipped through it idly, stopping to read some articles but mostly marveling at the pictures, the similarity to current magazines in format and style if not content. I’d seen archived newspapers and printed materials when I’d worked at the university library, back in what felt like another lifetime, but this was something else entirely. 

“You don’t realize how important you are in all of this, do you?”

I jolted and twisted around. Sam was standing in the doorway, just outside the room. I pushed the magazine away and sat up. 

“I do. Really.” I couldn’t help chuckling. “I think you and Cas put that into some real perspective. But I’m out. I’m done.”

He crossed his arms and leaned against the doorframe. “What happened to being a ‘ride or die’ chick?” I thought he was teasing me, maybe, but there was some real sting to his words, too. I scowled. 

“You’re not the Sam that fits that bill anymore.”

“That didn’t seem to bother you before.”

I stood up and took a few steps toward him. “Before. Exactly.  _ Before _ . Before you turned on me. Jesus, Sam, it was like….it was like you were trying for force some weird sort of Stockholm syndrome on me.” 

“I got you out!” he retorted, pushing off from the doorframe.

I stood firm. It occurred to me that he was blocking my only exit if I needed to run. 

“Look,” I reasoned, trying to stay calm and also casting around for something I could use as a weapon. Would he hurt me? I wasn’t sure he wouldn’t. “You’re on your own here, okay? I’m done hunting. I have to be done with you.”

He took a few steps toward me, his face darkened. “You can’t.”

I took a step back. “I can,” I said. “I’m not going to pretend to be this selfless person who’ll stand by you through everything because you’re not  _ you, _ Sam.”

He lifted his hand like maybe he was going to grab me, but instead ran it through his hair. “So that’s it? Just like that.”

I felt my shoulders relax. He wasn’t a threat, not now at least. “You told me yesterday that you don’t care about me. Don’t start pretending you do now to try to get me to stay.”

“Would it work?”

I rolled my eyes. “No.”

“So I don’t care about you, and  _ you _ don’t care about saving the world.”

I bristled. He was trying to guilt-trip me. “You can leave now. Goodbye!”

He didn’t make as if to leave, but Dean appeared in the doorway. “Everything okay in here?” His eyes were wary.

I nodded. “Sam was just leaving,” I said, looking at him pointedly. Sam grit his teeth and strode out of the room.

Dean watched him go and then looked back at me. “I’m thinking maybe we should leave tomorrow morning.”

I nodded. “I’m thinking you’re right.”

* * *

I spent a fitful night in the bunker, catching maybe a few meager hours of actual rest in between thinking about the events of the last several days and planning for whatever came next. I had started over once before, but there had been a clear finality that time. Now I was stepping away on my own, in the middle of a universal crisis, apparently, and as much as I knew I needed to get away, I couldn’t help the guilt. What if they did, really, truly, depend on me to find the Horn, and I was dooming everything? That wasn’t like me, to walk away from something that big. But I also knew that I couldn’t stay with Sam.

We’d never unpacked, so Dean and I were ready to go as soon as we’d woken up. It hit me instantly that I wasn’t the only guilty one. Leaving Sam had to be harder on Dean than it was on me, but he hid it well from his brother, I thought.

Outside the bunker, he clapped Sam on the shoulder. “Listen,” he said. “I’m out, but if you’re in trouble…”

Sam nodded. “I know. Phone call away.”

Dean gave him a curt nod and dropped his hand. “Right. See ya later, Sammy.”

I turned with him to head to the car, but Sam’s hand fell on my arm and pulled me gently back. 

“Stay,” he urged.

I stared up into his eyes and although I couldn’t feel him, I thought he looked legitimately sad to see us go. I remembered our conversation in the woods, after we’d taken down the Jersey Devil, when he’d said it was better having company. That was the same night he’d all but admitted to wishing he could reach out to Dean, the night he’d seemed just as baffled and worried as I was about my sudden reappearance. He’d been sincere that night; he seemed sincere now. He was sad, or as close as this new version of Sam Winchester could get to sorrow.

He made it harder to say no. “I can’t, Sam. You know why.”

He nodded, jaw tight, and I realized that this was the first time I’d ever left him. He had walked away before, he’d  _ died _ , but I’d never been the one leaving. 

“You coming?” Dean called from the car.

I shook myself and turned away without another word, threw my bag in the car and climbed into the passenger seat without looking back. “Let’s go,” I said. 

Dean drove several miles to a bus station and parked outside. “You sure you’re good?” he asked.

“Are  _ you _ ? You can let me go, Dean, you’ve done it before.”

He muttered something about this being different. “You got everything set up, right?”

“Yeah. Got a hold of a friend last night. She’s expecting me sometime tomorrow. I’ll figure it out from there and call you when I’m settled.”

He nodded, accepting this, and pulled me into a hug across the seat. He didn’t say anything else when he let go, just looked me over once more, and gave another nod. I opened the door, grabbed my bag, and started to go when I felt a wave of affection wash through me. I bent down to look through the open passenger window and grinned.

“Love you too, loser.”

He made a face that was halfway a grin and halfway a grimace and waved me away. “Get going!” he barked, and roared the engine to life. As he pulled away from the lot, he stuck his arm out the window and waved.


	18. Chapter 18

Dean spent every waking minute expecting to turn a corner and find demons in the house.

It was impossible, he knew. He’d warded the _shit_ out of that house when he’d first moved in, and he went over the traps and signs and lines and hex bags daily, almost to a point that Lisa was ready to strangle him, he thought. He was almost ready to relocate them completely, as it was.

He’d left Y/N a week ago and had heard from her twice; she’d called once when she was settled, and again just yesterday. The text had just said, “Still alive” with some weird smiley face thing and he’d rolled his eyes but felt a little of the worry ease. She wasn’t using a personal phone, either. He was pretty sure her messages were coming from an encrypted e-mail address, and the one phone call had been from a St. Louis area code. How she’d managed _that_ he wasn’t sure, because he knew sure as Hell she wasn’t there.

She was playing it safe, and he was relieved even if his idea of “safe” had Ben and Lisa carrying hex bags and wearing anti-possession charms everywhere they went. Sometimes even more than demons, he worried he was turning into his father. And he worried about Sam, too, alone in Lebanon, essentially a research slave to Heaven, and wished he could be there for him, somehow.

Castiel showed up sooner than he’d expected, asking about Y/N, and Dean couldn’t help smirking when he told Cas he had no idea—because he didn’t. She’d been right about keeping him in the dark for exactly this reason.

“You’re sure?” the angel queried. “Because it is _essential_ that we find her.”

Dean shook his head, went back to checking the Impala’s oil. He hadn’t touched the car in almost a year, but when he’d made it home to Cicero he’d pulled off the tarp and slowly started tuning her up.  “I don’t know why it matters, Cas, it’s not like her empath mojo is working on him anyway.”

He felt Castiel stiffen and realized, too late, what he’d said. He hid his face behind the hood of the Impala and scrambled to recover. “So if you figure out how to get her powers back, by all means, start looking. But as long as they’re still dormant, I don’t see the point.” He scrubbed his sleeve across his brow, leaving a trail of grease, and tried to look busy.

Castiel stepped around the hood. “Dean.”

Dean barely glanced up and screwed the gasket cap back into place. “What?”

Castiel hit him with one of those soul-baring stares and Dean felt about ten inches tall. “What aren’t you telling me?”

Dean shook his head and shrugged. “I’ve got nothing, Cas.”

“Dean.” His tone carried a warning, now. “If you’re telling me her abilities are activated—”

“They’re not,” he snapped, defensive.

“—but not with Sam, then….”

Dean paused. Something in Castiel’s inflection caught him. “What?” he asked. “What’s that mean?”

But he’d given Cas his answer and without another word, the angel disappeared. Dread settled cold and heavy in Dean’s gut.

* * *

Sam wasn’t accustomed to being told what to do.

He should have been, really; for most of the years of his life his father hadn’t made suggestions. He’d made demands. And if either Sam or Dean responded with anything other than a strong “Yes, sir,” and immediate obedience, John had been quick to remind them.

That was before he’d left, though, and his years after Stanford Sam had done just about anything _but_ follow orders, sacrificing his relationship with his brother and even his humanity to carve his own path.

It was that stubbornness, he figured, that had let him take his body back from Lucifer right before jumping into the Cage. But since coming back, he felt like all he’d done was follow orders: Markus’s, Judith’s, Castiel’s...and now alone, essentially under heavenly house arrest in the bunker, it was starting to wear on him.

He didn’t remember Hell, not really, but he knew he was glad to be out. He knew he’d accepted that demon deal because no matter what, he’d needed out. And it had worked, especially with his double-agent status with Heaven, because he’d been in control in at least some degree.

Until it had all crumbled out from under him, he’d had to run, and they’d caught him and tortured him and that’s when, for the first time in a long time, he’d felt true fear: the terror that he was going to end up back in the Cage with Lucifer.

Even now, safe in the bunker, that fear gnawed at him, was the only thing keeping him from giving Cas a big “fuck you” and peacing out to wherever. The truth was, he didn’t give a rat’s ass about the Horn any more than Dean did. But he threw himself into the lore books and the archived Men of Letters’ files because he knew his only real ticket to freedom from Heaven and Hell was to find the damn thing and get it back where it belonged.

Which was why Y/N had pissed him off so much when she left.

He’d meant what he’d said a month ago, that it was better with her around than when she wasn’t—he was human, after all, and he craved human company. But the fact was that he _needed_ her to finish this job, and she wasn’t cooperating. And he had no idea where she’d gone.

He was sitting in the library maybe two weeks after she and Dean had left, sifting through one of the black, dusty file boxes when Castiel let himself into the room. He paused in the doorway and Sam felt himself being watched.

“Sam.”

Sam didn’t look up. “Cas.”

“How is your research?”

He pulled out a file and set it to the side, then kept digging. “Not very productive.”

From the corner of his eye, Sam saw Castiel nod. He stood silently watching a minute longer as Sam tried to scan an aging document for anything useful, then said, “Do you have any idea where she is?”

That gave him pause. He looked up. Castiel was looking at him expectantly.

Truth was, he _did_ have some general ideas, but not enough to pin her down. He knew a lot of places she _wouldn’t_ be, the cars she _wouldn’t_ be driving, and the aliases she _wouldn’t_ be using. He was pretty sure she was still in the country, and if he had to guess, probably somewhere in the West. Then again, she could have completely pulled a twist and gone to Florida.

As essential as any information probably was to the angel, Sam didn’t want to tell him this. Sam wanted to find her. _Needed_ to find her so this could all be over and done with. But he understood what Castiel and all of the heavenly garrison did not and by their nature could not understand: if she couldn’t feel him, she couldn’t do her job, and if she was forced, it wouldn’t work. He’d seen it firsthand. Somehow Castiel still didn’t get it.

“Not a clue,” he said, shaking his head. He thought Castiel seemed a little miffed.

He certainly sounded that way. “Sam,” he scolded. “Without her—”

“I just don’t know,” Sam said, shrugging his shoulders in a way he hoped was helpless. He offered the angel a little information so he’d relent. “I can tell you she didn’t go back East.”

“That...isn’t very specific.”

“It’s all I’ve got. Really.”

“Your brother wasn’t helpful, either.”

Sam snapped to attention. “You went to Dean?”

The angel nodded. “He was the last one to see her. But he doesn’t know; she kept that from him.”

Sam nodded. That sounded about right. “But he has to be in contact with her, right? Maybe there’s a way to trace those calls?”

The angel blinked. “You would know better than I would.”

Sam snorted at Castiel’s failed attempt at humor. “I’ll look into it,” he said.

“She is completely hidden from me; _you_ have to find her, Sam, if you want to end this.”

He met Castiel’s gaze across the table, intrigued that he seemed to have read his mind. There was some sense of urgency in the angel that hadn’t been there the past year; it almost bordered on desperation, Sam thought, and then he realized that Castiel showing _any_ emotion, no matter how slight, usually meant something big.

“What’s going on, Cas?””

The angel tried to feign confusion, but his lack of familiarity replicating human expressions twisted his face comically. “Nothing,” he lied. “Heaven’s growing restless since the operation in Atlantic City, as you say, ‘went to shit.’”

Sam narrowed his eyes. There was something else behind this investigation.  “I’ll start searching when you start talking.”

He watched Castiel consider his threat, weigh the options, and then settle on a decision. “It appears her abilities have reawakened.”

Sam raised his eyebrows. “You’re kidding. How?”

“Why would I joke about this?” The angel shook his head.  “I don’t know. But we have to find her before the enemy does.”

Sam nodded, shifted away from the files and sat down in front of his laptop. “I’ll find her,” he said. “But that means I’ll be leaving.”

Castiel waved a hand dismissively. “I can offer you some protection,” he said. “Do what you must, but you _must_ find her.” He left.

* * *

**January 1, 2012**

Montana was beautiful, cold, and quiet.

I’d always been drawn to mountains. Growing up in the Midwest, I loved the change in landscape and climate they offered, and nothing could beat mountain views. I’d enjoyed them daily in Costa, Rica, too, and despite everything that had led me there, I was glad to look out the window and see the Rockies towering above me again.

I had a college friend outside of Missoula, and she’d been, thankfully, happy to offer me her spare bedroom until I could figure things out. Maggie hadn’t asked questions, either, just accepted that I’d “had a rough turn.” She was a conservationist at Glacier National Park, and was sometimes gone working overnight for stretches at a time, so I got some alone time and she appreciated having someone at the house while she was gone, so I got away with just chipping in for groceries and some of the utilities. It was a great setup, all things considered.

I took precautions. I used an alias and had asked Maggie to use it, too, and while she’d looked at me sideways she’d accepted it. That was Maggie, though; she minded her own business as long as you minded yours. I kept a hex bag in my pocket constantly, salted the windows in my bedroom and carried a small scrap of iron when I couldn’t carry the Colt.

I took a job as a barista at a local coffee shop to save money until I figured out my next move. I’d had a similar job in college, so I was an easy hire. The job was good; I craved the routine and the normal stress that came with a morning rush, enjoyed the small talk with regulars, and genuinely liked the people I worked with.

I found ways to use my abilities, too, just for fun. A stressed mother got an additional espresso shot for free. A broken-hearted teenager got extra whipped cream and chocolate drizzle on her blended coffee shake. Resentful, spiteful, impatient businessmen got decaf.

It was useful, too. I could sense a conflict before it fully developed and intercede. I diverted workplace drama and customer frustrations this way, and co-workers commented that they wished they had my gift with people. They didn’t realize that the stress levels when shit hit the fan could cripple me, so I _had_ to work to keep it steady.

I liked the job, but it was temporary; I wasn’t sure what my long-term plan was. Right now it was to lay low and hope this Horn business would blow over or someone else would solve it. I was aware that at any time I might have to get up and move again, but I hoped to at least save a decent chunk of money to live on so I wouldn’t have to resort to credit card scams again. I had money in the bank from the Costa Rica job, but not enough to start over completely in the United States. I’d donated most of my belongings before leaving, too, not planning to come back. Even before then, I’d been on the road for years, so it wasn’t like I had anywhere permanent to return to, much less a bed or furniture.

Money was the reason I volunteered to work through the holidays. That, and Maggie was heading back to Iowa to visit her family, and although she’d offered, I had no interest in going back _that_ direction. What else was there to do, then? Tips were better on Christmas and New Year’s Day, plus time and a half pay was always great.

It was a slow, frigid, snowy evening on that first day of 2012, and already at least three  people had made “welp, this is the year the world’s ending” jokes, and I mentally laughed at how ridiculous they were and yet cringed because maybe this time it really would. Other than a few small rushes of groggy, hungover twenty-somethings, it was quiet, and by 8 p.m. the store was mostly clean and prepped for the openers. I sat in the back on my last break, drinking a peppermint latte, feeling content and maybe almost happy for the first time since those nightmares had started back in Alajuela.

My break ended and I tossed the mug in the sink on my way up. There was a drink on the counter and I tied on my apron and relieved Nick from the bar so he could work on the pastry case.

I read the order and pulled the shots, filled it almost full with coffee, topped it off with the espresso and handed it out.

“Triple Red Eye! Someone’s tired—”

My lips froze halfway to a smile and I took an involuntary step back as Sam Winchester strode up to the bar and wrapped his hands around the cup.

“Hey,” he said with a grin that said he knew _exactly_ what he was doing.

I glanced furtively around the shop and found nothing out of the ordinary. Eddie was in one of the booths with his laptop spread in front of him, Lauren and Cindy were tucked in their usual corner, and a young couple was ordering at the POS, but otherwise it was vacant.

“What’re you doing here?” I hissed. I felt sick. It had only been four weeks. Not even. Maybe I hadn’t been as careful as I thought.

He shrugged. “Working a job….You _do_ know there’s a case here, right?”

I scowled. “No,” I said. I’d been keeping as oblivious to the news as possible. “I’m out.”

He scoffed.

Nick set two cups on the bar and I glanced at the markings, then poured milk into a pitcher and began steaming it.

“A coffee shop? Really?”

I bristled, and I was glad that anger was generally my default in uncomfortable situations. “What’s wrong with that?”

“It’s a little...normal.”

I pumped chocolate syrup into the cup and placed it on the machine to catch the shots, then moved onto the next drink while they pulled.

“I can be normal.”

“Please,” he said. “You’re a hunter. And a good one.”

I looked up at him sharply. The compliment surprised me, but I wasn’t stupid. I narrowed my eyes. “What do you want?” He wanted me to go back with him, surely.

He took a sip of his coffee and stepped aside as I passed out another drink.

“I need your help.”

“Ha!” I barked. “Yeah, right. The last time I helped you I got my shoulders ripped open by the Jersey Devil, and then you mind fucked me for two weeks while I was trapped with a bunch of _demons._ No way. Find the Horn on your own.”

I turned to the bar. There were no more drinks lined up, so I grabbed a rag and started wiping down the countertop.

“It’s actually not about the Horn; it’s about this case.”

“Okay, then there are probably plenty of other hunters in the area. Why do you need _me_?”

He shifted, took another drink. “Most hunters don’t want much to do with me since Lilith.”

I snorted. “I wonder why…”

“Why don’t you drop the attitude? I did what I had to do in New Jersey. I’m asking for your help.”

I gritted my teeth and refused to look at him. “I’m out, Sam. I’m done hunting. For good.”

He threw his head back and laughed, a real, full belly laugh so loud that customers turned to stare.

“Out,” he repeated, still chuckling. “Like you were ‘out’ in Costa Rica?”

I squatted down to wipe down the inside of the milk fridge, where I was momentarily and thankfully out of his line of sight. “Coming back was a mistake.”

“Your powers are working, though.”

I paused, completely still, halfway through swiping the inside of the door. He knew. _How_ did he know? Had Dean told him?

I swallowed, my mouth suddenly dry, and began straightening the gallons of milk, wanting to avoid the subject. “I thought you said this isn’t about the Horn.”

“It isn’t. No leads on that, especially since we lost our empath.”

I slammed the fridge a little forcefully and strode to the other side of the bar to start cleaning there and tried to ignore him.

He kept going. “Actually, I’m pretty sure it’s a Shtriga. A lot of sick kids.”

I was relieved he let it go. “A Shtriga? Should be simple then.”

“It would be,”  he said, “except the last thing parents in a small town want to do when their kids are dying is let a 6’4” stranger into their living room.”

I paused. “You want me to play the woman card.”

“I want you to play the _empath_ card.”

I looked him over carefully. Sam but not Sam. Same body, same eyes, same hair, but everything from his expressions to his tone to his mannerisms were just _off._ He didn’t even carry himself the same—the old Sam hunched his shoulders slightly, tried to make himself as small and non-threatening as possible just to put strangers at ease. This Sam filled out the entirety of his massive frame, held himself to his full height and never averted his eyes.

“You know, you used to be good at talking to victims.”

“Things have changed. Will you help? Kids are dying, you know.”

I felt a chill and shivered. He was too matter-of-fact for something so grave, like he didn’t _really_ care about them. But I knew he was preying on the fact that _I_ would feel too guilty to say no, that I would be willing to do anything for some helpless kids. That fact, that he was purposefully baiting me, was enough to keep me steady.

“No,” I said with a note of finality. “I won’t.”

Even after that his eyes held no emotion. He shook his head. “You ever think that maybe you’re the one that’s different?” he asked, and he turned and walked out of the shop without a glance back, leaving his half-finished drink on the counter.

I took a minute to steady myself. My hands were shaking. Nick glanced at me from where he was cleaning the oven. “You okay? You look a little pale.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I’m good.”

He gestured toward the door. “Who was that guy?”

I blinked and shook myself, then started breaking down one of the espresso machines. “My ex. It’s fine. Just hadn’t seen him in awhile, you know? Kinda weird.”

He watched me a moment longer. “Yeah, I get you. You want me to walk you to your car when we close up?”

I chuckled, not only because it was a warm gesture, but also because the idea of Nick, who probably weighed 170 and was built like a runner, being threatening to Sam in any way was hysterical. But I wasn’t one to shoot down chivalry. “Sure,” I said. “Might as well.”

But there was no need. Ours were the only two cars in the lot when we closed an hour later, and although I checked the mirrors on my stolen clunker obsessively on my way home, the roads were pretty empty, too. Still, when I opened the door and stepped into the house, I half-expected to see Sam there, sitting on the couch and waiting.

I locked the door behind me, checked the back door and the windows, and made sure the blinds were closed. I woke up my laptop and clicked onto the local news website and began searching for news of sick children. Nothing. I tried another. Nothing about cases of pneumonia or bronchitis or even influenza taking children.

I snapped it shut and put it in its case with the power cord, then snatched my duffel bag from the corner of my room and began tossing clothes and toiletries into it. There was no case. He’d come looking for me and he’d found me. It was time to go.

I left my key on the counter made a mental note to call Maggie when I had the chance. I dialed Dean on the burner phone I’d picked up a few weeks ago; it was past midnight in Cicero, but this couldn’t wait. I threw my bags over my shoulder and snapped off the lights as it rang, and on the fourth ring, just as I was turning down the hallway toward the door, Castiel appeared and Dean answered, voice gravelly with sleep.

“No!” I blurted, despair flooding me.

“Y/N?!” Dean sounded panicked.

“Don’t be afraid,” Castiel soothed.

I turned, still clutching the phone and my keys, and ran for the back door. “They found me,” was all I had time to pant before I plowed into Castiel. He wrapped his arms around me and I felt a powerful jolt behind my navel and then there was nothing but darkness until I landed face down on what felt like carpet.

There was a shriek, Dean’s voice shouting “Son of a _bitch!”_ and Cas responding with, “I need you both.” Light flooded the room as I pushed myself onto my knees. I blinked. I was on the floor in a bedroom—apparently _Dean and Lisa’s_ bedroom. They were still in bed, Lisa cowering against the headboard with the blankets pulled up around her, eyes wide and doe-like. Dean was halfway out of bed, wearing just a pair of grey sweatpants, a gun in his hands.

Hurried footsteps came toward us down the hall, and just outside the door a voice said, “Mom? Dean? Is everything okay?”

Dean lowered the gun and scrubbed a hand down his face. “It’s fine, Ben. Just a dream. Go back to bed.”

Lisa stood up and pulled on a robe. “I’ll go with him,” she said, and slipped out the door.

Dean’s eyes followed her and he finally noticed me, still kneeling on the floor.  “What the hell, Cas?!” he snapped, glaring daggers at the angel.

“We don’t have much time,” he said. “We need to talk.”

“Time for _what_ , exactly?” Dean snarled. He clicked the safety back on the gun and slid it into the nightstand drawer as he stood up. The look on his face was murderous. “It’s the middle of the night, you break into _my_ house, scare the shit out of _my_ family. This better be _good_ , Cas, or I swear to God—”

“It’s Sam. I can fix him.”

Dean looked like he was about to argue with whatever Cas said, but he did a double-take at his words. His eyes flashed a warning. “What are you talking about?”

The angel turned sorrowful eyes on me. I felt compressed under his gaze. “When Dean told me your abilities had reawakened, but you couldn’t feel Sam, I realized what I’d done. I pray you’ll both forgive me.”

I looked to Dean for any clue and he just gaped wildly between me and Castiel.

“What are you talking about, Cas?” I asked.

“I had to find you as soon as possible. You and Sam are the only key we have to finding the Horn, but you’ve been unable to...because of me.”

“Get to the point,” Dean barked.

The angel cast his gaze downward. “I pulled your brother out of the Cage. Heaven knew we would need him, so I negotiated his release. But there were terms.”

I could feel Dean’s agitation growing. “What. Terms.”

“We knew the demons would need him as equally as we would, and that Lucifer wouldn’t release him to us. But as you know, no demon deal is free. Certain currency was involved. The demons didn’t have a use for all of Sam, and we decided we could do without parts if it meant we could have something.”

My heart was pounding. “What do you mean? What parts?”

He raised his eyes to mine and then Dean’s. “Sam is missing his soul.”

After a beat Dean said, “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

“They were the only terms we could come to.”

“So you decided he didn’t need a soul?!” Dean was boiling. I felt choked.

Cas shifted uncomfortably.

Dean spun in a circle, his hands gripping his hair, and then he whirled back around. “Let me get this straight. You brought my brother back from Hell, but you left behind the part that makes him, I dunno, _human_ ? That makes him not let his girl get hurt by a bunch of demons? That part that actually is _Sam_?”

“I was wrong!” Castiel snapped. “I made a mistake and _I’m sorry._ ”

Dean shook his head aggressively and marched right up to Castiel, their faces mere inches apart. “You get it back,” he growled. “You fix him. _Now_.”

Castiel didn’t even flinch. “I will,” he said. “But I need your help. Both of you.”

Dean’s eye twitched and he clenched his jaw. I found my voice. “Who did you negotiate with, Cas?”

His eyes flicked from Dean to me. “Crowley. He’s promoted himself to King of Hell.”

Dean shoved away from him. “Awesome,” he said. “Just _great._ ”

I felt sick, and I felt relieved, and I felt terrified. Sam wasn’t really back; he wasn’t turned into some twisted version of himself, and there was hope to find him again. But he was still in the Cage, almost two years later. “So why now?” I asked. “Why are you suddenly so concerned with putting him back together?”

“It’s because of you,” he said steadily. “Your empathic abilities can’t read him because he isn’t whole. I didn’t realize...Heaven didn’t realize that would matter. But it does. We can’t find the Horn without you both, and—”

“For the last time, shut it about the damn Horn!” Dean shouted. “The Horn is what got us all into this shitstorm. You think we really care?”

“The Horn is what got your brother out of the Cage,” Castiel reprimanded. “You should show some respect.”

Dean looked as if he was gearing up to throw a punch, but I pulled myself up and stepped in between them, facing Dean.

“Dean,” I said, trying to calm him. “I don’t care about the fucking Horn. But we both want all of Sam back, right? I’ll play along with them if we can get the rest of him out of there.”

I watched him battle with himself. “No,” he said. “We’re not playing their games anymore.”

I shook my head and turned back to Castiel. “How do we get him back?”

The angel seemed satisfied. “He will be damaged. He may be broken, and badly hurt. But it is possible. We will have to be careful; if we can renegotiate with Crowley, it will be simplest. But we may have to take alternative measures if not.”

I nodded. “Y/N…” Dean warned.

“What?” I snapped at him. “Seriously? It’s Sam, Dean.”

“Is it? If he’s here, walking, talking, I mean…” He looked at Castiel imploringly. “He’s happy, isn’t he? The way he is now?”

“Not exactly. He doesn’t feel human emotions. But he is...satisfied, I suppose.”

The realization that I couldn’t feel Sam because _Sam_ couldn’t feel numbed me, and I played back the conversation Brian and I had had about him back in that warehouse:

_“Oh he’s definitely human. A little...different, but human. Not a demon, at least.”_

_“What do you mean, ‘different’?”_

_“I don’t know. He’s not a demon, at least. I can’t read demons. I don’t know why. But I can read Sam. I’ve been inside his head, and it’s not...it’s not normal. It isn’t a typical human mind. It’s almost…”_

_“Sociopathic?”_

_“Possibly. Cold. Calculating. It’s almost as though he’s entirely left-brained.I don’t know. You tell me, empath. Does he feel guilt for what he’s doing to you? Does he… ‘emote’?”_

He hadn’t felt guilt, or remorse, or _anything_ because he had no soul, no real conscience to keep him from doing wrong. He was mechanical; he’d told me he didn’t care about anything...of course not. Of _course_ not.

I snapped out of my thoughts to Dean arguing vehemently with Castiel. “—can’t do it. He can’t suffer like that.”

I was jittery; my skin feeling like it was electric, like a complete caffeine rush. I wanted to be out the door _now_ to find Crowley, I felt willing to do anything — jump off a mountain, go toe-to-toe with a dragon, _whatever_ —if it meant saving Sam, making him whole again.

“But Dean,” I panted, “If he’s walking around part-soulless who knows what he’s capable of?”

Dean shook his head, adamant. “You don’t know what he’ll be like after. You don’t know Hell...and his was twenty times worse than mine. I wouldn’t wish that fallout on anyone, especially my brother.”

“Dean…”

“I want him back, too, I do. But at what cost? The world? His sanity? His soul?”

“His soul is still in the Cage,” Castiel reminded him. “Would you rather it suffer there, or on Earth? You suffered when I pulled you out, Dean, and I believe I’m correct that you preferred life here over there.”

I watched his jaw work, his Adam’s apple rising and falling. When he spoke, his voice was soft. “What’ll happen to him?”

“He will suffer...but to what degree, I cannot say. Forcing such a damaged soul back into a body has never been attempted. He may not remember for a long time, if at all, if we’re careful.”

Dean stared at the angel, then locked eyes with me, turmoil carved into every line of his face. But looking at me, he seemed to reach a decision. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s find Crowley.”

“You’ll need to relocate. Sam will expect you here.”

“So? Why isn’t he in on this?” Dean demanded.

“Sam is sharp. Honed. Brutal and effective. Imagine having no remorse, feeling no guilt, having no conscience. He is operating like a machine, which is exactly what Hell wanted when they released him. But outside of that circle of demons, he’s grown bold and wild. He is harder to control. His lack of morality makes him unpredictable and rash. His is a risk, and we need him whole, but he will reject it. He won’t trade his high performance for a soul ravaged by Lucifer.”

I felt Dean’s anger swell and placed a hand on his arm. “So, Bobby’s? We can’t stay here, and the Bunker is off-limits as long as Sam’s there.”

“Fine,” Dean huffed. “But we’re driving. And when this is over, it’s _over._ ”

He stormed past me out of the room. Castiel watched me curiously for a moment, then vanished.

While Dean changed and packed I lugged my stuff downstairs and found Lisa and Ben sitting at the kitchen table eating bowls of cereal. She attempted a smile. “Good to see you again,” she said.

“Yeah…” I replied. “You might want to head up and talk to Dean a minute.”

She nodded, put her bowl and spoon in the sink, and went upstairs.

I watched her go. Behind me, Ben said, “He’s leaving again, isn’t he?”

I sighed and sat down across from him. “Yeah, Ben. We have to help Sam. Again.”

He didn’t say anything to that, just nodded gravely. Too gravely for an eleven year-old, I thought.

A few minutes later I heard Dean and Lisa descending the stairs. She came into the kitchen behind him, arms crossed. Her face, though, wasn’t angry but resigned, as if she’d known this would be her life with Dean and while she didn’t like it, she accepted it. Ben, however, glared up at him.

“Ben—”

But Ben shook his head, pushed his chair back from the table, and brushed past them into the hallway. Lisa reached to stop him, but Dean shook his head.

“It’s okay. I’ll be back.” He looked at me. “Coming?”

I stood up, giving Lisa an apologetic smile, and followed him out the door and into the garage. To my surprise, he passed up the truck and tossed his bag into the backseat of the Impala. I raised my eyebrows.

“Knew I’d changed the oil for a reason,” he muttered. We got in and for a moment he just sat there, running his hands over the wheel. Then he turned the key in the ignition and flipped on the lights and we were on the road.

After awhile he said, “So, how’d Sam find you, anyway?”

I shrugged. “I didn’t ask. He made up a case in town as an excuse, but I’m assuming he’s just Sam and freakishly clever and found me out.”

Dean snorted. “Guess you should’ve gone to Florida.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey there! I've been working away at this between life, and it is coming along! I have some time off from work/school starting next weekend, so updates might come more quickly over the next few weeks. 
> 
> A couple of things:
> 
> You'll notice there are references to Y/N being from St. Louis/the Midwest in here. In fleshing out this character, I figured a Midwest upbringing would align nicely with the boys' background, and I chose St. Louis because, well, the boys tend to end up there or near there relatively frequently (at least in comparison to other cities), so it made sense to me that they would run into her there.
> 
> Along those lines, I have an idea for a prequel writing itself in my brain. I've actually got most of it outlined--how Y/N came into the story, etc. If people are interested in reading that, I'll start working once I'm through with this one! Let me know.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a white, bright Christmas morning where I'm at, and I'm posting this early in the spirit. If you celebrate, Merry Christmas! If not, Happy Holidays or just well wishes in general! 
> 
> There are lots of details taken and adapted from later seasons (some exact dialogue in places) in this chapter. Enjoy!

Chapter 18

We made it to Sioux Falls in record time. When we reached Bobby’s, though, the house was empty. Dean located the hidden key in one of the junkers and let us in, then gave the old hunter a call.

He must not have picked up. “Bobby? It’s Dean. Y/N and I are at your place. We might be summoning Crowley here, just a head’s up, so when you’re done sitting on your ass wherever, give us a call, alright?”

He tossed the phone onto the coffee table, then plopped onto the couch and threw his arm over his eyes.

His sudden irritation caught me off-guard. “What’re you doing?”

“What’s it look like? Sleeping.”

I shifted. “Don’t you think we should...do something?”

He used the toe of his left boot to kick off his right, then did the reverse. “You’re right. We should. What would you suggest? Because I’m fresh out of ideas.”

“Well you said yourself, we could summon Crowley.”

He slid his arm from his face and shot me a hard stare. “We could. Yeah. And say what? ‘Oh hey, King Asshat, would you mind giving us Sam’s soul? Because we need it.’ Right. I’m sure that’d work great.”

“What’s the matter with you? Where’s your fight, Winchester?”

He glared, then turned into the couch, pulling an old throw over his head. “‘M tired,” he mumbled. “Talk later.”

Dean was angry, so angry, at Castiel and at the whole situation. I didn’t blame him. I was mad, too. But I couldn’t mope. If I couldn’t be productive, I at least had to move. So I left the house and walked out into the yard, wandering among the junkers and clunkers and finally climbing onto the bed of an old 1950s style Chevy truck, my breath misting on the dry northern air.

“We’re here, Cas.”

The angel appeared and took a seat beside me.

I was tired of running from all of this, and I remembered that Cas was an ally, and once had been a friend. He’d broken orders to fight with and protect us. Maybe something had changed since Lucifer had killed him, but I had to believe that deep down, he was the same.

But I was still angry.

“I want to know everything,” I demanded, angling my body to stare right at him. “I want to know the plan from the beginning. I want to know what we’re doing to get Sam’s soul back, and what it’ll do to him. No bullshit. All of it.”

He leveled a solemn nod. “Fair enough.” His eyes lingered over the yard as he spoke. “After Lucifer and Michael went into the Cage, Heaven was in chaos, and the Horn vanished. Hell realized not long after we did, and both sides began the search. We’re fortunate that demons cannot get near the Horn without sustaining physical damage; unfortunately, they launched their own investigations under Crowley.

“We realized, too, that we alone couldn’t find the Horn, that we needed an empath. I immediately thought of you. I...hesitated to bring you back. I didn’t mention you for quite some time.”

That admission surprised me. “Why?”

He creased his brows. “Because you’re my friend.”

I blinked, taken aback, and he continued. “I likely wouldn’t have called you back were it not for Sam.”

“What do you mean?”

“Initially, we needed a spy, one the demons could use and trust, ideally one with powerful blood. We knew that Sam would be ideal primarily due to his connection to the demon legion because of Azazel, and that we’d need both of you ultimately. I knew Crowley had interest in the Horn and that I could convince him to free Sam.”

“Crowley could do that? All along?” I bristled. Dean and I had hunted Crowley down for that exact reason to no effect.

Castiel shook his head. “Crowley had to negotiate with Lucifer to release him. Apparently, Lucifer agreed only if he could keep Sam’s soul. Crowley knew that without his soul, Sam would be an obedient, remorseless soldier. Either way, Heaven got the bloodline we needed. If I’d realized the harm it would cause…”

I felt sick. “You’ve all used him. That’s all you’ve ever done.”

Castiel ignored my accusation and continued. “Lucifer gave Sam the offer to lead the army or stay in Hell, and he took his freedom. Once he’d been here, working, for a few months, I appeared and offered him redemption if he worked for Heaven.”

“So you got your inside man and a direct line to me.”

The angel hung his head. “Yes.”

“So why wait so long to bring me back?”

“I’d thought to keep you away as long as possible, maybe avoid it completely. I thought maybe we’d find the Horn before needing you.”

I sighed. “And I guess Sam has no idea that you and Crowley--”

He shook his head once, firmly. “No.”

“So you’re just manipulating everyone.” I jumped down from the truck. “How are we supposed to trust you now?”

He didn’t say anything, just met my gaze with those luminous blue eyes.

I sighed and sat back down beside him. I was so damn tired.

“So...is this really gonna work? Bringing Sam back?”

He nodded curtly. “It should.”

“And if it does, Sam will be…?”

“It’s difficult to say. Putting such a damaged soul into a human body has never been done. It could kill him.”

“Wow Cas. You don’t pull any punches.”

He made a face. “I was not attempting to hit you.”

I sighed.

“You seem distressed.”

I snorted. What was there to not be distressed about at this point? But I asked,

“Will he remember?”

“There are ways to prevent it, but nothing is certain. He may remember some, or all, or nothing.”

“What about...all this? Will he remember this year? What--what he did?”

“If we’re able to protect Sam from Hell, but keep his memory of Earth intact, we will. We need him to remember all he can about the Horn.”

I didn’t say anything at first. The question hung like a stone between us. I exhaled my deepest fear.

“I don’t want him to remember it, Cas….I don’t even want to remember it.”

There was a swell in my chest, like a water balloon engorging beneath my sternum. I’d managed to shut it all out except for nightmares, yet somehow thinking that Sam might relive those weeks with me--and what he did with me--afresh and in his right mind, knowing that he’d want, no, need to talk about it, to process, to apologize and repent, brought on such a panic and fear for me and for him that I felt I couldn’t breathe.

Amidst the cold panic I felt warmth, like a soft, light blanket settling around my shoulders. A sense of calm enveloped me and my breathing slowed with my heart. Feather-light tickles brushed the back of my hand where it rested on the truck bed, but when I looked I saw nothing, though I felt shielded.

“I regret, and always will, involving any of you in this fight.”

I realized, meeting his eyes, that everything, all of this, wasn’t Cas, but Heaven. He was just following orders, roped right back in as before.

“You used to fight for us, Cas. With us. What happened to you?”

He averted his eyes. “I’m trying to be good.”

“You’ve always been good, Cas. The reason we met is because you saved Dean from Hell, remember?”

“I promise, on everything I have, that I will do all I can to save Sam as well. All of him.”

I contemplated that. “And he’d just be Sam. Whole and good.”

“All he lacks is his soul.”

“Well if that’s all,” I droned, and nodded. “I’ll do whatever you need me to, Cas, I swear, and Dean too, I’m sure. Just get him back to us. Please.”

“Come on,” he said, standing up. “We need to prepare to summon Crowley.”

* * *

 

I smacked Dean’s feet where they stuck up on the arm of the couch.

“Wake up,” I barked. “We’ve got shit to do.”

He sat up with a start, battle ready, and then glared when he saw Cas trailing behind me. “I swear, one of these days…” he rubbed his eyes and looked at his phone, then snorted. “Bobby’s apparently working a chupacabra case with Rufus in New Mexico.” He stood and started rifling through a closet in the hallway. “You wanna check the trap under the rug?” he asked.

Cas and I moved the coffee table, pushed the furniture against the walls, and rolled up the rug to reveal the Devil’s Trap. We scrutinized it for any broken lines. Of course, because it was Bobby’s, it was immaculate. Dean had prepared a bowl with oils and herbs, drawn the sigil and lit the candles. Cas and I stepped out of the way and he took a knife, sliced across his palm, and dropped his blood into the bowl. “You ready?” he asked.

When we nodded, he struck a match and dropped it into the bowl. “Et ad congregandum...eos coram me.”

Within moments, Crowley appeared within the trap. “Hello boy--” He looked from Dean to me to Castiel and frowned. “Well isn’t this a surprise. Lose your Moose, Squirrel?”

“I think you might know, Crowley,” Dean said. “Spill.”

Crowley blinked at him and turned to Castiel with a scowl. “What’s this all about?”

He wasn’t used to being caught off-guard, not knowing the entire situation, and it clearly unnerved him. It was almost comical to see Crowley, momentarily, off his game.

“We need Sam’s soul back,” I said.

His eyes flickered over to me. “And I need 10,000 virgins, but we can’t always have what we want, can we? It’s not negotiable.”

“Crowley,” Castiel growled, raising himself to his vessel’s full height. “We need it to find the Horn.”

“Bullocks,” he spat. “My army can find the Horn.”

“Fat chance without Sam, right Crowley? Or the right empath?” I snarked and crossed my arms.

“Need I remind you that I still have access to all the data, the research, that Sam organized? I have labs of bloodwork from Sam and you.” He pointed at me and scoffed. “Empath.”

I felt Dean bristle. He stalked to the table, picked up a flask of holy water, and approached the edge of the Trap. “Listen, Crowley, let me explain how this works. You give us Sam’s soul, or we do this the hard way.”

Crowley narrowed his eyes. “You really think I’m afraid of you?”

Dean glowered back. “Try me.”

“Look at it this way,” Crowley said, pacing the perimeter. “I need the Horn. I need a human to bring it to me. Do you know how easy that will be? Candy from a baby. You’ve already taken my one edge, my one reliable soldier, and now he’s useless, anyway. Bigger fish, Castiel.”

Dean lunged, but Crowley sidestepped and Dean knew better than to enter the Trap. Crowley clicked his tongue. “Are we done here? I have business to attend, souls to deal, Hell to run…”

“No,” Castiel said. “We had an agreement.”

“One you broke, I believe, when you let Sam go AWOL.”

“I had no choice.”

“Listen, Crowley, you want the Horn? Give us Sam’s soul.” Dean was growing impatient.

“Do you think I’m an idiot? The minute I give you Sam’s soul, I lose my bartering chip. I have nothing to exchange for the Horn, and as you’ve so astutely pointed out: I can’t find it on my own, can I?”

“Then take mine,” Dean snarled, and I automatically moved toward him.  
Crowley chuckled and rocked on his heels. “And do what with it? Wallpaper my bedroom?” His eyes roved to me, and he cocked his head to the side, considering. “Then again…”

Suddenly Dean was in front of me. “Forget it. Not happening.”

“Are you sure? I promise I’ll give her back...once I have the Horn. She’s much more useful than you are, Dean.”

“Not without Sam’s soul,” Castiel reiterated. “She’s useless without him.”

Dean and I shared an eyeroll and then looked sideways at the angel. I shook my head and stepped around Dean.

“We’re missing the point,” I said. “Crowley can’t get us Sam’s soul because he doesn’t have it. You said it yourself, right Cas? Lucifer still has it.”

“Smart Kitten,” Crowley said with a wink. My skin crawled. “So, there it is then. We have nothing to offer one another. Can I go now?”

“Oh come on, Crowley!” Dean almost roared, slamming a fist on the table. “You’re not stupid; you know you can’t get the Horn if we can’t use Sam and Y/N to get it. What do you want?”

“I want both of them. Sam--soul and all--and Y/N. They’ll find the Horn for me, not Heaven.”

Castiel looked as though he would consider it, but Dean stormed to the bowl of summoning ingredients and stared at Crowley. “Fuck you, Crowley,” he growled, and snuffed out the flames.

Crowley vanished.

“Dean!”

“Don’t even start,” he threatened. “We’re not dealing with him again.”

“Oh yeah? So how, exactly, are we supposed to save Sam?”

“We’ll find another way!”

“Right, because that’s worked so well for us the last, I dunno, five thousand times you’ve ever said that!”

“Do you wanna go live as Crowley’s lapdog? Hang out in Hell for an eternity?” 

I was rearing up for a fight, my hands balled into fists, when Castiel placed himself in the limited space between us. “There may be another way,” he said.

I almost smacked the smug expression off Dean’s face as he crossed his arms.

“It is more dangerous and difficult. I’d hoped to reason with Crowley, but as a last resort...we may have an option.”

“Well, spill it,” Dean commanded.

“Do you still have the Horsemen’s rings?”

It took Dean a minute to realize what he was talking about. “They’re buried in the salvage yard.”

“You can’t be serious,” I said. “Opening the cage?”

“Wait here,” Castiel ordered, and vanished, leaving Dean and me to stare dumbfoundedly at one another.

“He’s not serious, is he?” I said.

Dean shrugged on his coat. “Guess I’m gonna dig up those rings.”

“You’re fucking crazy,” I muttered, following him out of the door. “And you know Bobby would say the same thing.”

He unlocked Bobby’s shed, fumbled around for a minute, and pulled out two spades. He passed one to me. “Come on.”

To me, every part of the salvage yard looked the same as the last, but Dean apparently saw it differently. He weaved through rows of cars and scrap metal until he reached his destination and stopped. He pointed to a rusted bumper.

“Two of them are buried in front of that, about a foot apart. Start digging.”

Twenty minutes of digging later and I had two small boxes with two rings in my hands. Dean had the others. We went back into the house to warm up and wait for Castiel.

We didn’t have to wait long. When he saw the rings, he took them in his hand, studying them. He handed them back to Dean. “You remember the incantation?”

We both nodded. Everything from that day was seared into our memories.

“You can use the key to enter the cage without opening it. Think of it as a back door. If you have the key on you, you can enter without risking Lucifer’s escape, but only by jumping in from within Hell.”

Dean blinked. “So you’re saying if we open it up here, on Earth, it creates a giant void. If we go into Hell…”

“Only you can get in or out of Lucifer’s cage.”

Dean stared down at the rings and turned them in his hand.

I cleared my throat. “How...uh, how do we get into Hell?”

“You need a Reaper,” Cas said. “And you need this.” He pulled from his pocket a silvery, shimmering rope. It was thin, about the thickness of a pencil, and when he passed it to me it felt nearly weightless, cool, and silky.

“What is this?” I said.

“It’s angel hair woven with threads from the Shroud of Turin,” he said.

“Shroud of what?” Dean asked.

The rope flowed over my hands as if it were alive, almost snakelike. “It’s supposedly the burial shroud of Jesus. I think.”

Dean gave me a look he usually reserved for Sam’s outbursts of random-ass information. I shrugged. “Catholic parents.”

“What’s it for though?” he asked.

“You’ll need it to tether yourselves together so that whoever goes into the Cage can be pulled out.”

I sputtered, “Pulled out?!” at the same time Dean snapped, “Both of us are going?” I gaped at him.

Cas nodded. “The only way for a human to enter the cage this way is with another as an anchor.”

Dean frowned at the material in my hands. He picked up an end between two fingers and stared at it with his nose scrunched, the way people look at worms. “And this is supposed to pull me back out of the Cage?

“Who says you’re going in?” I demanded.

He dropped the thread. “You’re kidding, right? Why wouldn’t I?”

I gave a sarcastic shrug. “Uh, I don’t know, maybe because I’m the empath so I’ll have a better chance of getting him?”

“Like that matters!” Dean argued.

“It does not matter,” Castiel affirmed.

I scowled. That was two strikes against Cas today as far as taking my side went.

“See?” Dean said. “I’ve got this.”

“No.”

He looked shocked that I’d defy him. “No? What do you mean, ‘no’?”

“I’m going in. You have Lisa and Ben to think about, too. And when Sam comes back--”

“When Sam comes back. Exactly. When Sam comes back, you think he’ll forgive me for letting you go in there with Lucifer? After everything? No way. Sorry, sweetheart, but something happens to you down there, it’ll destroy him. And that’s on me.”

I stood my ground, trying not to let him get to me. “And losing you won’t? I was the one with Sam when you were in Hell, Dean, and we know how well _that_ worked out.”

He stiffened. I watched his jaw clench. “Do you want to die?” he barked.

“No!” I practically shouted, frustrated. “But I’m willing to risk it if that’s what it’s gonna take to keep you and Sam from going in self-sacrificing circles.”

He shook his head adamantly. “But we need you in this. There’s no point getting Sam’s soul back if you’re gone. If anything, I’m the least essential piece.”

“You’re essential to Sam!”

He looked like he would argue, but swallowed it down. “Look,” he said. “I’m going down alone.”

“You cannot,” Castiel. “You need another to tether you to Hell.”

“Then I’ll call Bobby,” he said, reaching into his pocket for his phone. “Have him come back. He can tether me.”

I pressed my hands against my face and groaned in frustration. I pushed them back through my hair and then threw my arms out to my side. I breathed. “Dean. I know you have this hyper-masculine, alpha male need to protect every woman you ever meet. I get that. I do. But don’t be stupid. If you have to go into the Cage, fine, but I’m going to Hell with you. I’m capable. You know this. We’ve been on worse hunts together. What’s the deal?”

He sighed, sank onto the couch, and scrubbed a hand down his face. “It’s Hell, Y/N. It’s about keeping you out of there.”

There was something else. I crossed my arms and stared him down.

He relented. “I promised Sam, okay?! Before he said yes, he made me swear I wouldn’t let you do anything stupid to get him back.”

“But you can?” I asked, incredulous.

“That’s different!”

“Oh please. Don’t be sexist.”

He huffed, stood and began to pace from the room. “Dean,” Castiel called, and he stopped at the door to the kitchen. “She’s right. Let her go.”

“There’s no ‘let’,” I muttered, just to be clear. “He has no control over me.”

Of course, Dean knew that. He’d always known that it was a losing battle. “Fine,” he growled, turning around. The look he gave me was angry, but even more fearful. He turned his attention to Cas. “How do we do this?”

Cas explained that the only way for a living human being to enter hell was through what he called a “Reaper gone rogue.” While Reapers typically only appeared to humans who were dead or dying, he stated that some possessed humans and dealt in taxiing souls from Earth to Hell or, on the rare occasion, Heaven, in exchange for favors. He warned, too, that demons had used them before to divert souls that were Heaven-bound to Hell.

The nearest of these “freelance” Reapers Castiel could locate was in Minneapolis. Dean refused to allow Cas to teleport us, so we settled into the Impala for another four-hour drive. I woke up just past noon to Dean shaking my shoulder.

“We’re here,” he said, and got out.

I wiped the drool off of my face and followed him. Cas climbed out of the backseat.

“Sam is calling to me,” he said as he closed the door. “I assume that means he’s reached the bunker and realized neither Y/N nor I am there.”

“Well, he can wait,” Dean said. “Where do we find our rogue?”

Castiel pointed to a yellow cab parked down a side street half a block from where we stood. Dean raised his eyebrows. “He’s moonlighting as a literal taxi driver?”

Castiel missed the joke, but I chuckled. “My part ends here,” he said. “His name is Ajay.” He passed Dean and me each a slip of paper. Each had an inscription in Enochian. “When you’re ready to leave the Cage, pull on the cord and utter those words. Y/N, when you feel him, pull back and do the same.”

We both nodded numbly. “You should have everything you need,” he said.

“Where will you be?” I asked. His presence offered security; he felt like a back-up plan.

“Here,” he said. “Or with Sam. When you return, call for me.”

“What are you going to tell him?” I wondered.

“That you were too quick. That you had sigils prepared to banish me and escaped. I have been searching for you without ceasing.”

I nodded and avoided Dean’s gaze. I could feel his disbelief and anger that I hadn’t had sigils prepared in the first place.

“And your sigil?” the angel asked Dean.

Dean patted his chest. “You sure this will work?”

“It will,” he said, and vanished.

“Alright then,” Dean said. “Let’s go save my brother.”

We approached the cab with caution but as casually as we could. Dean knocked on the passenger side window and when it rolled down, before the Reaper could finish saying, “Off duty” he’d pulled the back door open and we’d both slid in.

“Ajay,” Dean said.

He was a young middle-eastern man, and as soon as Dean said his name his bewildered expression hardened. “You know my name,” he said.

“And what you do,” Dean said. “We want to do business. We need to get into Hell,” he said. “To Lucifer’s Cage.”

Ajay stared at Dean and then at me, then burst out laughing. Dean and I exchanged a look.

The Reaper wiped a mirthful tear away from his eyes. “You’re kidding, right? No one wants to get into Hell.”

“Look, can you get us there, or not?”

“I can,” he said. “But I won’t.”

Instantly Dean moved and had an Angel Blade pressed against his throat. “You’ve got two seconds to change your mind,” he growled.

Ajay held up his hands. “Okay okay!” he pleaded. Dean shifted the blade slightly away from his neck. “I can get you into Hell, but I can’t get you close to the Cage. You’ll have to find it yourself, and it’ll cost you.”

“What’s the price tag?”

He looked at both of us through the rearview mirror. “One day, you will owe me a favor.”

“Fine.” Dean put the blade away and leaned back. Ajay swallowed. “Damn it...What do you wanna go there for, anyway?”

He took the keys from the ignition and got out. We followed him down the street where he turned into an alley that dead-ended into a brick wall. Every building was covered, foundation to rooftop, in graffiti. Big, bold, colorful images from faces to tags to abstract explosions of color. Ahead of us, at the end, between sprawling letters and humanoid figures, someone had painted a blue, six-paneled door.

We stopped in the center of the alley. “Take my hands,” Ajay said.

“It gets creepier,” Dean muttered.

We each took one of the Reaper’s hands and he closed his eyes. The graffiti on the walls began to swim, bleeding together into streaks of reds and violets and greens. Even as it did, though, the blue door grew clearer, more three-dimensional. It appeared to pop out from the wall like a 3D film, and then it erupted into bright, white light. Heart racing, I looked at Dean, but his eyes were squeezed shut. The light reached out, bright tendrils of smoky white swept around us, and we were sucked in.

When I opened my eyes, we were in a hallway that almost matched the alleyway. Instead of graffiti, though, the walls were just dark, rough stone, and instead of the icy Minnesota winter, my face was blasted with heat like I’d just opened an oven. There was a low background of noise: creaking, rattling chains, muffled moans and shouts, grinding and churning gears. Shadows flickered across the walls, but no obvious light source could be detected.

“This is Hell?”

Dean licked his lips and shifted. “It’s not...it’s not the part of Hell I know.”

“You have exactly 24 hours,” Ajay said. “Meet me back here, or miss your ride back.” He turned on his heel and was instantly gone.

“I hope he means Hell time,” Dean muttered. He set his watch. “Okay. Uh…” he looked me up and down and glanced around the space we stood in. “Put your watch on that ledge so we know this is the place.”

“Good,” he said, when I’d done that. “Any idea where we find the Cage?”

“Deep,” I said. “Cas told me that once.”

“So we go down,” Dean stated. “C’mon.”


	20. Chapter 20

**Chapter 19**

Hell was a maze of red brick and prison cells.

We wove through the labyrinth like lab mice, pressed close to the walls and slightly crouched, tension between our shoulders taut like bowstrings. The entire place was breathing and pulsing, the air the hot damp breath of some beast, and I wondered more than once if we’d been swallowed alive.

We turned a corner and passed through a cobblestone and mortar archway into a hallway of cells that stretched an impossible distance. Here the cries and moans were louder. Arms and heads flopped weakly from spaces in the bars, like they’d tried to reach for some shred of hope or escape, souls desperate for freedom yet hopelessly resigned to an eternity of torment. 

Dean and I shrank from the walls and unconsciously drew closer together, me right at his back as we passed the twisted, scarred faces of the damned: a woman, skinned, arms chained like Christ crucified to the wall crying for aid; a man whose eyes had been replaced with each end of a nose ring from a bull, asking for “Eddie.” A girl, maybe nineteen and clad it white, face pallid but unmarred, eyes bright as her face swam into the window in the bars, appeared from the darkness like a ghost. “You came. I knew you would. I’ve been praying for...forever.”

Dean stopped and I bumped into him as he stared in at her. “I - I’m not — I’m sorry.”

But she smiled. “You came. I knew you would. I’ve been praying for...forever.”

Dean looked from her to me to the ground to the ceiling and back to her. I swallowed the lump in my throat and balled the back of his jacket into my fist. “Dean,” I urged, giving him a slight push with my knuckles. “Sam’s waiting.”

That shook him out of it, and he gave a tight nod. We continued forward, keeping our eyes ahead, trying to shut out the cries and screams.

The corridor opened to a circular chamber at the top of a wide, winding staircase. After the first few levels, it spiraled away into the darkness. 

“I guess Robert Plant had it backwards,” Dean quipped, but the joke fell dead as soon as it passed his lips. We started down, and when we could no longer see I took a flashlight from my coat pocket and clicked it on. I’d almost expected it to not work, that the depth and blackness of this nightmare would swallow the light, but it held true, illuminating one step at a time ahead of us.

We descended for what felt like hours that stretched into days. As we went deeper, the temperature dropped with us until our breath puffed into clouds and our teeth began to chatter. The masonry here had started to crumble, the stone more and more cracked with each tier until we were forced to an abrupt stop where an entire section of steps had broken away, leaving a gaping hole maybe six feet wide between us and the rest of the stairway below.

I took a few steps back up and sat down to put my head between my knees. Dean’s trepidation swelled and he placed a hand on the wall to steady himself.  There was no sound but our breath, no light but the narrow beam from the flashlight. We stood there, blanketed in that inky, cold dark, and I thought absurdly of that scene in  _ Fellowship of the Ring _ when the stairs in Moria crumbled into nothing as they fled the Balrog, and then my chest swelled with panic that what if,  _ maybe _ , there was something like that down here, too?

“Hey,” Dean said, and I raised my head. His hand was still on the wall, but he was watching me with concern. “You good?”

I was not good, but I was too proud to admit it and for him to feel that he was right and I should have stayed behind, so I nodded and stood, albeit on shaky legs.

“I’m gonna jump,” he said. “And then you’re gonna jump. Okay?”

I stared at him. Jumping down six feet was one thing, but jumping up… “Dean, how are we going to get  _ back _ ?”

He looked like he hadn’t considered it. “I don’t know,” he said. “But we’ll figure that out, alright?”

He backed up the staircase and I leveled the flashlight on the landing below him. He huffed in a breath, swung his arms back and forth a few times, and then flung himself off of the ledge. I closed my eyes while he was midair and only opened them when I heard his feet scrap on the stone.

He dusted himself off and looked up at me. “Okay,” he said, stepping back to give me space but opening his arms as if to catch me, just in case he  _ did _ need to catch me. “Come on, Tomb Raider.”

I gripped the flashlight and didn’t think about it so fear wouldn’t freeze me. I darted forward, pushed off and leapt forward, the beam of the flashlight jerking with my arms and spiraling light in an arc above us. I landed just on the edge and lurched forward with gravity. Dean threw out his arm to slow my momentum and I laughed, relieved. 

He chuckled nervously, too, and we kept going, and it wasn’t much longer — maybe ten minutes of step after endless step — when we reached the end.

The stairs led to a short, circular landing at the base of an archway so massive that the light couldn’t even shine to the top of it. It was cold enough down here that frost glistened across patches of the walls. I pulled my sleeves over my hands.

“Can’t be far now,” I hoped.

We passed through the archway and found ourselves at a dead-end on a large, semicircular balcony. A dark, steel rail ran along its edge. 

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” Dean swore, but then light flashed and we both gasped.

Beyond the balcony swirled a tempest. The blackness beyond was not nothingness but storm clouds, thick and heavy, so many that they almost suffocated the space. Lightning streaked through them, rumbling shades of grey and casting shadows across the expansive fury. It pulsed first right, then left, and bolts darted and danced like veins, tributaries of brilliance fanning out like spiderwebs. It illuminated the chasm one piece at a time, and the more it flashed the more we saw what the darkness obscured. Chains crisscrossed through the space before us, from above and below and both sides, horizontal, diagonal, vertical, all anchored in the center to a solid, impenetrable, black cage.

“We found it,” I breathed.

Six sided, it didn’t have bars but looked woven out of iron, leaving gaps too small to even see within it. It seemed miles from us, floating in that storm, and spikes struck out rigidly at each end. It looked deadly. Monstrous.

“I’m coming, Sammy,” Dean said, more to himself than to me. He dug the rings out of his pockets, two in each hand. “Rope?” 

I pulled it out and wrapped it around my waist. When I pulled the end to tie it around the length, it slid between my fingers and sealed together on its own. Surprised, I drew the other end around Dean and it closed itself together too.

We met each other’s eyes, afraid but determined. He clapped me on the shoulder. “Be right back,” was all he said, and he put the rings in the same hand where they snapped together like magnets. “ _ Bvtmon Tabges Babalon,”  _ he chanted, and almost more quickly than I could blink he was sucked into nothing. The rings slid onto the thread and hung, suspended in the air and cemented to the spot where Dean had vanished, right where the end of the rope stopped abruptly. 

I was alone.

* * *

Dean’s boots slammed into the ground hard and he staggered on impact, sucked in his breath and steadied himself.

He was inside Lucifer’s Cage.

There was no light save for the intermittent flashes of lightning through the miniscule cracks in the cage. The space couldn’t have been bigger than twelve square feet, and it rocked around him like a ship. Dean felt his stomach roll.

“Dean! It really has been too long.”

He spun around but there was no one. “Lucifer,” he growled.

“In the flesh,” he said, and his face swam into view: Nick’s face, the original vessel and Dean wondered how that was possible, when —

“It’s what you see, Dean. You can’t actually see me as I am, you know? And without Sam’s body...well, I guess you wouldn’t want to see that again anyway. It’s fine.”

Dean turned away from him and began walking to the edge. The lightning had illuminated a humanoid figure there moments before.

“No witty banter? Come on, Dean, it’s been over a century down here and your brothers and my brother are so  _ boring. _ ”

Dean had words, he had  _ plenty _ of words but he wasn’t here to shoot shit with the Devil, so he reached out his hand until he felt flesh. When the lightning started again he saw that it was Adam, slouched and staring at the wall, his eyes glazed over. Dean jerked back, shaken.

Lucifer was leaning, arms crossed, against the same wall. He waved a hand playfully in front of Adam’s face. “Michael shut them both down about twenty years ago,” he said with a shrug. “Wanted to ‘protect him’ I guess.” He rolled his eyes. 

Dean put his back to him and began walking the other direction, one hand on the side of the cage, head sweeping left and right for Sam. 

“Now Sam, he’s been a blast. A real sport.”

Dean bristled and tried to ignore him. Even as he wished he’d brought the flashlight down with him, he realized it probably wouldn’t have worked. Something about this place felt tainted and choking. His right hand went to his waist where he could feel the angel rope beneath his jacket, just pinching his skin, and the smallest wisp trailing off into nothing where it was tethered on the outside.

And then he tripped, going to his knees, and when he raised his head his face was inches from his brother’s.

Sam’s eyes were half-lidded, his head lolling back against the cage, his jaw slack. Dean pulled himself up to kneel in front of him and smacked his face lightly.

“Sam. Sammy, it’s me. Hey.”

Sam groaned out a feeble, “No,” but began blinking, shifting like he’d only been napping. Dean’s pulse quickened.

“There you go, wake up little brother, come on.”

Sam opened his eyes, fully registered Dean in front of him, and started screaming.

Behind them, Lucifer laughed. “Forgot to mention, I  _ might’ve _ used your face a few thousand times. But who’s counting?”

Sam’s back arched and he kicked and flailed, anything to get away, but he was cornered. Dean grabbed Sam by the shoulders and held him still as best he could. “Sam. Sam!” he barked. “Listen to me, okay? C’mon man, it’s me.”

“Not the first time he’s heard that one from you down here. What will you try next?” Lucifer squatted beside Dean, his elbow on his knee as he leaned his face into his palm. He drummed his fingers on his jaw thoughtfully. 

Dean cursed and cast back in his memory for anything. “You wet the bed almost every night when you were seven years old because you overheard Dad and me talking about werewolves.”

“Good one!”

Sam pushed feebly against Dean’s chest but then let his hands flop into his lap. It worried Dean — no, it  _ terrified _ Dean — how easily he’d given in, how fast the fight had gone out of him. “No,” Sam begged, his voice wrecked. “Please. Stop.”

“No, please continue,” Lucifer urged, scooting closer. He raised his voice. “Hey, uh, Sammy? Remember that time you left Dean for a demon and started the apocalypse?” He flashed a grin at Dean. “So does Dean.”

He snapped his fingers and Sam was screaming again, folding in on himself, his hands going to his abdomen. Dean’s hands slid from Sam’s shoulders as he whirled his head around to glare at Lucifer. “What’d you do to him?!”

Lucifer stood and stretched. “Me? Oh no.  _ You _ just stabbed him. At least that’s what he saw.”

Sam was slumped, whimpering, crying, cowering away from both of them. One hand still clutched his stomach and the other was shielding his face, arm throw up as if to block a blow.

“And now you’re kicking him while he’s already down. Absolutely cruel, Dean, how could you?” He stepped closer to Sam and when he next opened his mouth, Dean’s own voice came out. “God dammit, Sammy, all you’ve ever done is let us down. First Mom, then Dad, and then me? You let the whole world down, Sam!”

“You son of a bitch,” Dean growled, and realizing he had no hope to save Sam as long as Lucifer had any control, he pulled the angel blade from his pocket.

The Devil laughed. “What are you going to do with  _ that? _ Kill me?”

Dean drew blood across his palm and hiked up his shirt. Lucifer raised his eyebrows and barely got out the word “kinky” before Dean pressed his hand against the sigil he’d earlier drawn on his chest. Lucifer burned bright for a second and then the light faded. He smirked and opened his mouth to speak. No sound came out. He snapped his fingers toward Sam and nothing happened.

“I can’t get rid of you, but I can shut you up,” Dean grinned.

With Lucifer silenced, Dean turned back to his brother. “Listen, Sam, I know I can’t convince you I’m real, okay, but Y/N’s waiting on the other end of this rope for me to pull you out of here, and we’ve gotta go.”

He rolled up his sleeve and again took the blade, this time slicing across his left forearm. As the blood pooled and dripped to the cage floor, Lucifer, realizing what was happening, flung himself toward Dean. The sigil held; it was as though an invisible wall had gone up between them, keeping Lucifer silenced and just out of reach.

Dean began chanting the spell. As the words fell from his mouth Sam shimmered into a cloud of smoke and fire. As Lucifer raged and writhed, furious, beside them, Sam’s soul grew to fill the space and then dove into the wound in Dean’s arm.

Dean shouted and jerked like he’d been burned. His arm glowed, lit from within, and the bright red of the blood in his veins stood out starkly against his seemingly translucent skin. The Cage shook, then, Lucifer’s voice began to creep back into being and he drew closer. Behind him, Adam — Michael — had shaken back to life and was striding toward him, his face dark. “You  _ cannot _ do this, Dean Winchester,” he commanded. A force flung Dean against the wall of the cage. He fumbled in his pocket for the paper from Castiel. He could hear, now, Lucifer roaring as he barreled toward him. He gave three tugs on the rope, read aloud the words in his hand, and felt himself sucked forcefully up moments before fingers closed around his throat.

* * *

The waiting was the worst.

I could neither see nor hear anything from where I stood. I didn’t even know if it had worked, if Dean was really in the Cage, because nothing had changed. 

So I waited, pacing, shivering and listening for anything coming down the stairs, terrified we’d be found, trapped, unable to escape. I was more afraid that I’d be taken, and Dean would be trapped with Sam’s soul eternally.

I lost track of time waiting. I knew that my toes and fingers were numb and I wondered if it was possible to get frostbite in Hell. Probably. It was Hell. 

I’d turned the flashlight off to save the battery and to hopefully hide myself better, just in case. I was glad for the lightning. I couldn’t imagine complete darkness while I waited. Even with the sporadic light, the terrible beauty of the storm, I felt the weight of how alone I was. It pressed into me, heavy on all sides.

And then I felt it. Three tugs on the thread. 

I jumped, heart pounding, and flicked on the flashlight so I could read the spell as I heaved on the rope. 

The minute I did, Dean appeared lurching and stumbling out of nothing, an absurdly good magician’s trick. The rope went slack and the rings slid down it to Dean’s waist. He bent over, hands on his knees, panting.

“You got him?” I asked, running to his side.

He nodded and straightened, patting his arm. It glowed beneath the skin like something bright was swimming through his bloodstream. When I placed my fingers against it, it felt hot.

I pulled on the rope and it released itself from my waist. The rings slid off of it and when I caught them in my palm they separated again. I placed two in each pocket. Dean wound up the rope and put it away, then checked his watch.

“Shit. We’ve got under and hour.”

My jaw dropped. “How is that possible? You weren’t...it didn’t...We took longer than an hour to get down here, but not that long!”

“I don’t know!” he snapped. He was scared. He knew we couldn’t make it without a miracle. “Time’s weird down here. Let’s go.” He took the flashlight from me and started back toward the staircase. He stopped short, and I gazed past him to see why: Crowley stood in the archway, rocking on his heels.

“Well. Isn’t this a surprise?” he said. “And of course it  _ isn’t _ , because I can never count on either of you to just do what you’re told.”

“Get lost, Crowley,” I snapped. I was out of patience.

“You can’t tell me what to do. I’m the King of Hell, remember? This is my kingdom.” He held out his hands to indicate everything around us. “And as King, I demand you give yourselves over to my service.”

“Fat chance,” Dean growled and took a bold step forward. “We’ve leaving.”

“Are you now?” Crowley said, raising an eyebrow. 

Dean tensed, gripping the angel blade. Surprisingly, Crowley raised his arms defensively. “I’m not here to fight,” he said. “I’m here to deal. Agree to my terms, and you can go.”

“We aren’t dealing,” Dean said at the same time I asked, “What terms?”

Dean looked at me like I’d stabbed him in the back.  Crowley grinned.

He strode toward us, heels clicking against the stone, the flashes of lighting making his face more monstrous. “The Horsemen’s rings,” he said, extending his hand expectantly. 

Neither of us moved. Dean rested his right palm against his left forearm, where Sam’s soul pulsed beneath the surface.

“Pretty please, love?” Crowley entreated, turning his eyes to me.

“No,” Dean snapped, answering for me. “Why would we ever think that’s a good idea?”

Crowley scoffed. “You think I’d actually let the Devil out? I wanted to help you get him back  _ in _ , remember? Lucifer walks free, I’m dog food.”

“Then why do you want them?” I demanded.

“Safekeeping. Decorating.” He shrugged. “They have their uses. Leverage, mainly.”

“Not gonna happen,” Dean promised. 

“Ah, well, then I guess you don’t get out, do you?” he asked. “How much time until your drug mule comes for you?”

Dean glanced at his watch and clenched his jaw.

“That’s what I thought. You’re stuck if you miss that ride, you know. And then...I get to do whatever I want. Oh, and, since you were so kind to retrieve the rest of Sam’s soul for me, it shouldn’t be too hard to put him back together and find the Horn. Especially with Y/N here, too.”

He grinned and clasped his hands behind his back. “So, what’ll it be, Dean? Everyone you’ve ever loved, or some jewelry?”

I didn’t give Dean a chance to respond. “Take us back to where we came in first,” I stated. Dean gaped at me, slack-jawed, and I felt confusion and anger and betrayal wash through him. I kept my eyes forward on Crowley, who smiled, knowing he’d won.

“Done,” he said, and snapped his fingers.

We were back where we’d come in. The searing heat was a welcome change against my frozen limbs and I sighed at the relief. My watch still sat atop the ledge where I’d left it, and I picked it up and put it back on, noting the time with a jolt. How could it have been 24 hours already? “Should be here any minute.”

Crowley cleared his throat. “The rings.”

I watched Dean’s internal battle, weighing the pros and cons, trying to imagine what could happen either way, to justify giving up what could be a dangerous tool. 

“Dean,” I urged. “We don’t have a choice.” And we didn’t — we either handed them over, or Crowley would keep us here and take them by force.

As I said it, there was a sucking sound and then a pop, and Ajay appeared right where he’d last stood. He saw us, and then noticed Crowley, and flinched back against the stone. “You didn’t tell me he’d be here,” he stammered.

Crowley smirked, clearly proud that he still had that effect of fear. “Ajay,” he said. “Good to see you again. We’ll have to do business again soon. For now, though, hold on a minute, will you? These two have something I need first.”

He flicked his wrist and we were rooted, rigid, to the floor. “Clock’s ticking,” he said.

Ajay twitched nervously, eyes darting. He looked ready to bolt.

“Don’t you leave!” Dean snapped at him, picking up on it as well. I slipped my hands into my pockets and took out the rings, but held them out with my fingers still curled over my palms. 

“You can’t be serious,” he growled, but he was almost pleading, and I had to look away from the hurt expression on his face. We were both desperate to leave, to get away from here, back to where Sam was so we could put him back together and put all of this behind us, and I banked on the fact that surely Dean knew as well as I did that Crowley had trapped us. 

“This isn’t over, Crowley,” I ground out, and dropped the rings into Crowley’s hands.

“I always knew you were the sensible one. Pleasure doing business,” Crowley said, tipping an imaginary hat. He turned and strode away down the corridor, Ajay grabbed our hands in his clammy ones, the walls melded together, and then we were standing back in that graffiti-covered alley.

Ajay let go of us so abruptly he almost shoved us away and began sprinting toward the street, looking over his shoulder, eyes wide.

I stared after him, confused. “Uh...thanks!” I called after him, but he rounded the corner and was gone. 

Dean whirled on me. “What the fuck was that?!”

I blinked. I’d known it was coming. “We were out of time.”

“We don’t make deals with Crowley! We don’t make deals with demons! When has that ever worked for us?”

I felt the full force of his anger spilling from him and it didn’t faze me. We were out. We were alive. Maybe I should’ve worried about Crowley having the Horsemen’s rings, but at that moment, I didn’t care. And I  _ did _ believe that he wouldn’t open the Cage with them. He valued his status as King too much. 

“We’re out,” I repeated. “We have Sam’s soul. I think that’s pretty damn good. We got lucky; he could’ve taken us, too.”

He glared at me, practically boiling. When I placed a hand on his arm in a vain attempt to calm him, he shrugged me off roughly and stormed back down the alley.

With a sigh, I followed him back to the car. It was going to be a long ride back to Kansas. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year!
> 
> Plenty of references and details directly from later seasons here--all credit to SPN's creators in those cases. Obviously, Hell, Ajay, and the soul-in-the-arm aren't from my brain.
> 
> It'll likely be a little longer until I post the next chapter...I've hit a point where, moving forward, I'm not 100% sure what's to come. Graduate classes are starting up again soon, too, so time's limited, but stick with me! I will finish this. I won't leave you hanging! But, of course...we have a ways to go until the end!


	21. Chapter 21

 

I didn’t want to think about how long it had been since I’d slept. This entire ordeal had started the evening of January first at the coffee shop in Missoula, and even though it was afternoon on January third, it felt like weeks had passed. 

I didn’t even pretend like I would try to stay awake while Dean drove; I slid right into the backseat, put my head on my duffel, and was dead to the world before he reached the highway.

I woke up to Dean shaking my shoulder. I squinted up at him as he twisted around in the front seat. His face was in shadows; the only light shone in from street lights outside the car. 

“Where are we?” I yawned, sitting up. “What time is it?”

“Just outside Omaha, and about eight,” he said. “I’m wiped. Unless you wanna drive, we’re stopping for the night.”

Dean had pulled into a motel lot. There were only two other cars parked, and the “vacancy” sign buzzed and pulsed spasmodically above us. We checked out a room, and when we opened the door were greeted with greenish wallpaper and furniture upholstered with faux cowhide.  “Just like the good old days,” I said wryly.

Dean grunted, dropped his bag, and kicked off his shoes. “Couple hours of shuteye and we can get moving,” he said. 

He was clearly still pissed I gave Crowley the horsemen’s rings. “What’s the plan tomorrow, anyway?”

Dean had pulled back the covers and sat on the bed, rubbing his eyes. “We go back to the bunker, we tell Sam what’s what, we give him his soul back, and everything’s good.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Cas made it sound more complicated than that.”

He let out a long, weary sigh. “Maybe it won’t be, just this once.” He pulled his legs onto the bed, drew the covers up around him, and rolled over to face the wall.

I figured any further planning could happen on the way to the bunker in the morning, so I flipped off the light and climbed into the other bed, still exhausted despite my nap in the car.

* * *

Loud, aggressive banging startled me awake. It took me awhile to realize where I was, sleep-dazed in the dark, but I reached for my gun on the nightstand and got to my feet just as Dean cut across the room, gun at the ready. He held it in his right hand, left on the doorknob, and peered through the peephole.

His shoulders relaxed and he lowered the gun, then looked over at me and said without a hint of surprise: “It’s Sam.”

“He hacked your GPS,” I said, realizing our mistake immediately.

Dean nodded with an eyeroll that clearly said he shouldn’t have expected less of his geeky little brother, and Sam pounded on the door again. Dean flipped the motel light on, slid back the chain and opened the door. “Hey, Sammy.” 

Sam’s eyes slid past Dean to mine, his expression a mix of anger and victory, the satisfaction of someone who’s just won some sinister game. He stepped over the threshold into the room, and I took an automatic step backward, the room suddenly too crowded. Dean shut the door behind him and moved just enough that he was still between Sam and me—it was a subtle movement, but one that each one of us surely noted. 

Sam was rigid, his hands at his sides. His gaze left mine and turned to Dean. “You wanna tell me what’s going on?” 

Dean looked back at me, and then, seeing that I was no help to him, blew out a long breath and turned back to his brother. “Well, here’s the thing, Sam: you don’t have a soul.”

The only sound in the room was the steady buzz of the mini fridge. Then, Sam said, “Sorry…. _ what _ ?”

Dean rolled up his sleeve, revealing the light glowing beneath his skin. Sam did a double-take, eyes wide.“When you got pulled out...your soul got left behind. So, Y/N and I went and got it, and we’re going to put it back.”

Sam continued staring, transfixed, at Dean’s arm, but then he seemed to shake himself. He blinked and laughed.

“Are you serious?” he said, still laughing. “My  _ soul _ ?”

“As a heart attack,” Dean said, his face stony. “Look, Sam, you’ve been played.”

That silenced Sam’s laughter. “What are you talking about?”

“Remember when you told me you didn’t know who pulled you out? That you thought it was demons you were working for until Cas got involved? Cas has been involved from the beginning.  _ He’s _ the one who got you out.”

“That’s impossible,” Sam said with a snort. “Cas didn’t bring me back. There’s no way. They offered me a deal in Hell, that if I worked with them…. I mean, if he brought me back, then he would have been working with demons, too….”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying, Sam. Cas and Crowley and Lucifer.”

Sam just stared, shifted, and leaned against the wall, considering this, or at least pretending to. “Cas brought me here, too,” I added. “He’s the one who planted those dreams and feelings so I’d come find you. It all has to do with finding the Horn.”

I could see the wheels turning in Sam’s brain. He pushed off the wall and paced across the room.

“Think about it, Sam,” Dean said. “You come back, you start working with demons, no questions asked. You don’t bother calling me. Or Y/N. Or Bobby.” He pointed at me. “Why’d you put the job before her? Why’d you let them lock her up for weeks? Why can she feel everyone else, but not  _ you _ ?”

Dean shoved his arm toward Sam. “Cas sent you to find Y/N a few days ago so he could tell us the truth, not so she could find the Horn. He didn’t lose her—he sent the two of us to Hell to get your soul back. And we did. I saw you in there with Lucifer and Michael and—dammit—Adam, and I got you out. It’s right here. We just have to put it back.”

Sam crossed his arms. He had questions, surely, but he said, “Who says I  _ want  _ it back?”

“What?” I blurted.

“Of course you want it back, what’s wrong with you?” Dean argued, a look of disgust on his face. 

“Think about it, Dean,” he said. “No guilt, no remorse...not  _ caring _ about anything...I get the job done. I’m a better hunter than I ever was before.”

“We can’t get  _ this  _ job done without it, Sam,” I said. “You and me can’t work together if you’re not whole.”

He seemed frozen, rooted to the stained, threadbare carpet, weighing what we’d told him, looking between the two of us. “I don’t know,” he said. He started pacing again. 

“Don’t know what?” I asked. “Call Cas. He’ll tell you.”

He didn’t respond. Dean stepped forward and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Look, Sam—” 

Sam shrugged him off, and he must have silently called for Cas, because the angel appeared in the bathroom door. 

“Sam.”

Sam spun toward him. “You lied to me?”

Castiel had the decency, if not the skill, to attempt to look sorry. “I did what was necessary. Had I realized the consequences, I may have reconsidered. But your brother and Y/N are right; you need your soul returned.”

“No.”

“I’m afraid you don’t have a choice.” Castiel moved toward Sam, but Sam slipped out of his reach and drew an angel blade from his coat. He turned just as Castiel reached him and slashed forward, slicing into his arm. Castiel jerked back with a shout, and Sam took the opportunity to lunge toward the door. Acting on instinct, I threw myself toward him, meaning to tackle him around the knees but misjudging the distance and hitting him lower on his legs. As I held on, trying to slow him, he kicked and landed a solid blow to my stomach. I dropped to the floor, winded, but I’d slowed him down enough that Dean had come around in front of him, and he decked Sam in the face with enough force to knock him out cold. 

“It’s for your own good, Sammy,” he said. 

The three of us managed to maneuver Sam into the Impala’s backseat. He slumped against the door next to Castiel, who we’d assigned the task of keeping him unconscious until we reached the bunker.

* * *

 

Four hours later, we’d moved Sam to his room and laid him in his bed.  “Well?” Dean said, pulling his brother’s shoes off. “How does this work?”

“I will take Sam’s soul from you and put it back into his body,” Castiel said. “It will be...unpleasant for him.”

“What about Hell?” I said. “What about everything he’s done  _ since  _ Hell?”

Castiel nodded. “I need to protect him from what happened in the Cage. The wall I’ll construct will block those memories, but they may also prevent him from remembering the past year.”

“Isn’t that what we want?” I said, remembering our conversation from a few days ago.

Castiel sighed. “Sam has information about the demons’ progress toward the Horn that we may need.”

I felt suddenly panicky. “He wrote it down, right? Or told you? It’s Sam we’re talking about.”

“Can we just put my brother’s soul back?” Dean snapped. 

Castiel nodded. “Hold out your arm.”

Dean presented his glowing, translucent arm, and Castiel’s hand hovered just above it. “You must not interfere.” When he saw the conviction in Dean’s eyes, Castiel began muttering in Enochian under his breath. White light glowed from his palm—grace, I believed—and descended onto Dean’s forearm and enveloped it completely like a smoky cast. Then, as Castiel continued chanting, it formed a sphere of light and rose into the angel’s palm. Castiel cupped it between his fingers. Dean pulled his arm back, now back to normal, and rubbed his right hand over it.

Castiel leaned over Sam’s unconscious form. Still muttering, he placed one hand on Sam’s forehead and then took the hand holding Sam’s soul and plunged it into Sam’s chest.

Sam’s back arched off the bed and a deep, agonized howl tore out of him. His entire body lit up from within, his skin diaphanous and his face bright red against his neck and forearms. Dean and I both leapt forward, but a glare from Castiel stopped us short, and then, abruptly, pain exploded behind my ribcage and I collapsed to the floor with a cry.

Distantly, I registered Dean shouting my name and going to his knees beside me, but the world was nothing but a bright, white void of blazing pain and heat. I was burning from within, a scalding I felt in each and every atom in my body. My blood ran with rivers of boiling metal, and a cacophonous battlefield of explosions erupted in my head. 

Then Dean was in front of me, hands on either side of my face and I blinked up at his blurry features. “I can feel him,” I wheezed. “ _ Fuck _ , Dean, it hurts, it hurts.” It was unending, a constant tearing apart and knitting together again of every fiber within me, just tearing and knitting and tearing and knitting until, like taking the needle off a record, it stopped, and I was left limp and panting on the floor, my head on Dean’s knees, my face wet, my skin damp with cold sweat.  

Shakily, I sat up with Dean’s hand gripping my arm for support. “What was that?”

Cas squatted beside us. “It seems you experienced what Sam did. Which is good; it means I was successful. Even better—you can’t feel it now, correct?”

I nodded. 

“Then the wall has been effective too. I apologize. I didn’t realize you would be affected as well.”

I leaned back against the side of the bed and let my head fall back. I was starting to shiver. Dean got to his feet. “So he’s okay?”

“He should sleep for several days, but when he awakens, he’ll be whole. I would give him his rest. He needs it.”

I pulled myself up on trembling legs and looked down at Sam. He didn’t look any different, and I couldn’t feel him, but I could sense a change, somehow.  Dean reached down and pushed a lock of Sam’s hair out of his face. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s let him sleep.”

We relocated to the library, where I sank into a chair and Dean absently glanced over the books and files Sam had been studying. “So what happens when he wakes up?” Dean asked. 

“We resume the search for the Horn,” Castiel said.

“No,” Dean said. “We need to let that go, Cas.”

“I brought your brother back from the Cage, Dean. He—and you—owe me this.”

Dean slammed his fist down on the table. “God dammit, Cas! Haven’t we done enough?!”

“It’s okay, Dean,” I said, rubbing my temples. 

“As long as Sam walks this earth and the Horn is missing, Crowley could send him back any time, my word or not. If we don’t find it, Crowley has a chance of getting his hands on it and having complete power over any soul.”

“What are we supposed to tell him, if he doesn’t remember?” Dean said, sounding defeated.

“Whatever you have to. But until this is finished...it isn’t finished.” He turned as if to leave, but Dean stopped him.

“Wait,” he said. “How long until he’s awake?”

The angel appeared to do some calculating. “Approximately 123 hours, 42 minutes and 37 seconds.”

Dean gaped then rolled his eyes. “If we find this Horn, are we free to go? Sam keeps his soul, we live our lives, that’s it?”

“As far as Heaven is concerned, yes.”

Dean turned to me. “Are you in?” he asked.

“What choice do I have?”

Dean looked tired. Defeated, maybe. “Okay. I need to go home, get some things, see Lisa and Ben. But I’ll be back. Three days, tops. Probably less. Are you okay here? Or you can come, but...”

“We aren’t leaving Sam alone,” I said, anticipating his fear. “Go. I’ll be fine.” I didn’t know if I’d be fine. I was shaken and Sam was unconscious down the hall. “I’ll call if something comes up.”

Dean nodded, still unsure, but unable to think of a better plan, he soon was on his way, leaving me practically alone in the bunker. 

It was eerie, being alone there. But I understood why Dean had left, that he’d needed to prepare the Braedens if he was going to be in this for the long haul. He didn’t want to—he wanted out—but he was starting to realize, just as I’d always known, that with Sam back, there was no way he’d be out. Neither would I.

Not long after Dean left, I took one of the cars out and drove a few miles to a local grocery store and stocked up on a few days’ worth of food. The clouds were grey and heavy, and on my way back the wind had picked up and it began to snow big, fat flakes. After I’d returned and put the food away, I booted up Sam’s laptop and checked the weather. The Midwest was about to be slammed with one hell of a snowstorm.

Great. I called Dean. He said he’d be back as soon as he could, not to worry, it’d be fine.

So I settled in. That first day alone in the bunker, I mostly avoided Sam’s room, just peeking in every few hours to check that he was still breathing. It was like living with a corpse, he was so still. If he dreamed, they were peaceful; I couldn’t feel him any more than I had before Cas had fixed his soul. I hoped that meant that whatever stasis Cas had put him in was working, and not that Cas had failed.

Fortunately, there was plenty to do to pass the time. Down in the firing range, I found a store of weapons and set about taking inventory and cleaning the guns. Then, I spent a few hours on target practice to both ensure they worked after decades and sharpen my (now rusty) skills. I went through the bunker and found stockpiles of canned goods, extra blankets, fuel, a stash of amulets and spellwork ingredients, and an entire closet full of nothing but cases of 5-gallon buckets of water.  I made lists and excel sheets until I was satisfied that we could easily survive a nuclear attack or another apocalypse.

At the end of the second day I poked my head out of the bunker’s door to find the world covered in a foot of snow. The door barely budged, and I pulled it back shut against the cold and texted Dean. He was going to be delayed.

I glanced tentatively into Sam’s room, hoping he’d be back before Sam woke up, worrying that he wouldn’t.

I cleaned the bunker top to bottom—who knows how long it’d sat untouched—and moved my few belongings into one of the bedrooms and tried to make it as homey as possible. I didn’t know how long this would last, but I wanted whatever comfort I could get. Then, with no practical tasks left to do, I started looking through the books in the library for anything that caught my attention or snagged my interest. It was mostly dusty old lore books and encyclopedias, but in a dusty corner, in a box pushed behind some shelves, I found a small stash of fiction. Delighted, I pulled it out.

At the end of the fourth day, I was sitting in the library, tucked into a chair, a cup of coffee in one hand and Steinbeck’s  _ East of Eden _ open on my lap. Dean would have been baffled that I could read at a time like this, with Sam comatose down the hall, but I could read in the middle of a land war and not be bothered.

Dean was on his way back and set to arrive within the hour, and the relief that gave me counteracted the anxiety that Sam would be awake soon. So it was just me there in the silence, a thick blanket around my shoulders, comfortable and relaxed for the first time in awhile, Sam all but forgotten in the pages.

That was, until I felt it.

Panic. Sheer, chilling panic erupted in my chest with such force that for several moments I couldn’t breathe as my chest seized up and my fingers clenched the book. For a minute, maybe less, it gripped me, and then it lessoned, I breathed, and instead it was replaced with pure confusion.

I shook myself, took a mental step back, and closed my eyes to better focus.

Every cell in my  body seemed to vibrate with the intensity of a semi-truck crossing a bridge. I felt it like a bass riff in my ribcage, rolling down my arms to my fingertips, a warm current, a gentle hum, and my breath caught.

_Sam._

It was overwhelming in a way it’d never been before, when it had come on gradually over time, but now it was slammed back into me, overpowering my senses. I felt him as if he were trying to wear my skin, to fit his large body beneath mine, his larger heart pumping and bursting through my veins. It hurt—it tore and gnawed at me—and at the same time it was pure ecstasy, warm and radiant. I choked out a sob and dropped the book, one hand at my chest as if to hold myself together, to keep it all inside, the other gripping the arm rest, eyes closed.

There was confusion, and pain, and fear...but also wonder and relief. Trying to center myself, I focused on those, breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth and counting backward from ten until it started to ease, to fade from the foreground of my emotions and settle much deeper as my own calm took over. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh, SORRY for this delay, and sorry for this cliffhanger. 
> 
> Hope it was worth the wait!


	22. Chapter 22

Sam’s heart was galloping in his chest. He opened his eyes and sat up with a great, heaving breath. He thrashed in the blankets a moment, seeking some threat, and then calmed when he found himself in a soft bed in a concrete room in the silence. 

He wondered if this was Hell. 

He wondered if this was some trick of Lucifer’s.

He wondered if it was none of those things, and barely kept himself from hoping that they’d somehow won and he’d survived.

He looked down at himself, legs twisted in the bed sheets. He was wearing a t-shirt and sweatpants and no shoes. He knew he hadn’t worn this on his way into the cage. So what…?

He glanced around the room. His boots stood by a dresser and his coat was draped over the back of a chair. Otherwise, there were no signs of the room having been lived in.

There were no windows, and the air was chilly and stale. He sensed he was underground. Why? What had happened at that cemetery?

_ Dean’s face, bloody and swollen, disfigured almost beyond recognition. The glint of light on the car. “I’ve got him.” The tentative control. Michael, enraged, rushing him. A sudden weightlessness. Then, nothing. _

Sam shook himself. He was alone. No one else was in his head. 

What was going on?

He swung his legs out of bed and stood. He felt steady. He wasn’t hurting. There was no soreness in his muscles and no ache in his bones. When was the last time he’d felt so rested?

He padded to the door, which was slightly ajar, and stepped into a long hallway. He looked both directions and saw nothing, but went left. He followed it until it opened to a wide space lined with shelves and decorated with tables and chairs—a library—but the decor, the feel, everything felt out of place for 2010.

His eyes scanned the room and he did a double-take. Y/N was seated at the table, slightly curled over a book.

Relief. He paced into the room. “Y/N?”

She jumped, startled from the chair, and turned to face him. Her eyes were wide.

He didn’t know what her being here meant, if he’d succeeded or failed, if he was back from the dead or had never died at all. He came around the side of the table and pulled her to him, clutched her against him and buried his face in her hair. He didn’t have words, just the desperate need for human closeness, to feel her warm and alive and breathing—

He felt her tense in his arms, and he pulled away, wondering what it was, what she saw, and then he remembered. He held her at arm’s length, struck with realization and then, confusion.

“Wait…” he panted. “I saw you—I felt Lucifer snap your neck.”

She just stood there, her lips slightly parted, and nodded. 

He had more questions, but he took a moment to look at her, to recommit her to memory maybe, or soak her in. 

Her hair was longer.

She’d always kept it just to her shoulders, long enough, she’d said, that she could still do something with it, but short enough to be easily pulled out of the way, where it was less likely to tangle or snag or be yanked. That’s how he’d known her since she’d joined up with them. But now it fell to almost cover her breasts, long and everywhere, the way it had been when they’d first met, before she’d come with them.

And then he knew.

“How long have I been gone?” He looked away from her and gazed around at their surroundings. “Where are we? What? Did we…?” He focused back on her, at a loss. “What happened?”

She swallowed, searching for her voice. There was some fear in her eyes, he thought, but he couldn’t blame her. Last time she’d seen him, Lucifer had been in control. “I…”

“Hey, Sammy.”

Sam spun. Dean stood in the doorway behind him, a duffel thrown over his shoulder and a few plastic bags in his hands. Sam felt tension he didn’t know he’d been holding leave him and stepped toward his brother.

* * *

Dean forced himself to stop silently in the doorway.

It took every ounce of his being, once he saw his brother vertical, to not drop his supplies and go to him, but he waited. Sam’s back was to him; he could see Y/N’s face clearly, read her body language, and he was ready to intervene if Sam hadn’t come back right.

Not that he’d really admitted that was possible or that he was in any way concerned about it. Sam  _ had _ to come back right; it was the only way. 

So he waited, but the moment she looked ready to crumble, he stepped in and he clutched Sam to him like a lifeline, the way they always did when one of them made it back from the dead, and when he felt Sam grasp him back he let his shoulders relax and let out a breath because yes, dammit,  _ that  _ was his brother.

Sam stared at him, and Dean said, “You okay?”

“Actually, um,” Sam said, “I’m starving.”

The normalcy of that statement surprised him, but Dean was pleased. He grinned. “Lucky for you, I just grabbed us some grub.” He bent and picked up the bags, and when he turned Sam was looking around. Y/N was gone. 

“She’s fine,” Dean told him, leading him to the kitchen. “Just spooked. Give her time.” He hoped he was right.

Dean led Sam to the kitchen, sat him down at the table and started throwing together a sandwich. This he could handle. One, get his brother back. Two, keep his brother fed and warm and safe. This was basic  _ take care of Sammy _ . He’d been doing that since he was four years old.

Sam was gazing around the kitchen. “Where are we?”

Dean set the plate in front of his brother along with a cold beer and lowered himself into the chair across from him. “Long story,” he said. “But it’s home.”

Dean saw ten thousand questions on his brother’s face and didn’t want him to ask a single one of them, didn’t want to shatter whatever bubble Sam was walking around in.

But then, of course, Sam had to ask, “How long was I gone?”

Dean swallowed, shrugged, tried to play it off like it was nothing. If Sam didn’t remember anything, he wasn’t about to complicate it. “About a year and a half.”

Sam gawked. “ _ What _ ?” He blinked, looked down at his hands, then back at Dean. “I was downstairs—” he shook his head. “I don’t remember anything.” He gaped back up at Dean. “So how’d I get back? Was it Cas? Is Cas alive?”

“It was Cas,” Dean said, because it wasn’t a complete lie. “I don’t get how, but he came through.”

Sam looked at him like he was trying to pry more of the truth out through Dean’s eyeballs, and Dean hated that Sam couldn’t just let things go and willed him with everything he had to drop it. For once, Sam did, and took a few more bites of his sandwich.

“So Sam...what  _ do  _ you remember?”

Sam stopped mid-bite, thought about it, and swallowed. “The field… going into the Cage…” he shrugged. “That’s it. Then I woke up here.”

_ Thank God for that _ , Dean thought, and nodded.

Sam gestured to Dean with his sandwich. “What about you? What happened, after?”

Dean took a long pull on his beer and leaned back in the chair. “After the Cage closed, something brought Cas back, and he brought back Bobby and Y/N and put me back together.”

“And then...what? You found this place?”

“Nah,” Dean said. “We hit the road for awhile. Tried to find a way to get you back. Cas was off fighting battles in Heaven. Eventually we went our separate ways.” 

“What about Lisa and Ben? I thought—”

“I gave up hunting for about a year. Just got back into it off and on a few months ago. I’m still with them most of the time.”

Sam looked confused. “Why’d you come back?”

Dean shifted. He didn’t want to have this conversation just yet, but he knew there was never any avoiding his brother’s scrutiny. “Honestly? Helping Cas with some stuff that’s going on upstairs. Long story.”

Sam looked at him like expected more information, but Dean just took a long drag on his beer, and he changed the subject.

“And Y/N?”

“Oh no no no,” Dean said, setting his bottle down and waving a hand in front of his brother. “I’m not playing the chick flick game with you two. You want to know about her life, you go talk to her.”

Sam ducked his head. “Right. But is she…?”

Dean sighed. “She’s good. We’re all good, Sam, okay? Cas is around. Bobby is still Bobby. You’re back. Don’t knock it, man.”

* * *

I sat on my bed in the bunker with the door closed and leaned against the wall, counting my breaths as I felt Sam’s emotion after emotion roll through me.

He was back.

I hadn’t meant to run and hide, but I was overcome and needed to breathe, to relearn to compartmentalize my feelings and his, and if I was being honest with myself, to absorb everything that was happening without having to hide anything. For now at least.

Besides, I wanted to give him some time with Dean. 

So I sat there and felt his relief and confusion and joy and concern and tried to remember how Pamela had taught me, years ago, to isolate him from myself and build a metaphorical psychic wall between us. As I packed everything that was Sam into little card catalog boxes in my brain, I wondered if the wall Castiel had constructed for him was similar to what I was doing, and if it would hold.

I was overwhelmed. Sam was back, and whole, and just like that I understood what had been missing. It was like when the power goes out and the house stops breathing. All of its background noise that normally goes unnoticed is deafening in its absence. The air conditioner, the fridge, the general hum of electricity. And when it comes back, it’s with the noise of a rocket taking off. Sam was  _ here _ , and he was loud and coarse, yet feeling him hum through me again, like he’d never left, was a comfort. 

If only I could forget the rest. If only his face wasn’t the same as that  _ other _ Sam, who’d leered at me from behind bars.

An hour later, there was a knock at my door and Dean’s voice asking to come in.

“Sure,” I said.

He stepped in and closed the door all but a crack. “You good?”

I nodded. “Just needed some space. It’s a lot to take in. Exhausting.”

“So he’s showing up on the empathy radar? We’re good?”

“Yeah. Where is he, anyway?”

“Shower,” he said, then paused, listening. We both heard the water running through the pipes. “So look, he’s got a ton of questions like we figured he would. I told him we came back to help Cas with a job upstairs. I don’t know how long that’ll satisfy him. You got the story straight?”

“I do,” I said, but he must’ve seen something in my face.

“Don’t get all righteous on me.”

I sighed. “I know. I’m not. It’s just...I don’t wanna lie to him.”

“And you think I do? It’s for his own good, Y/N.”

“I know,” I admitted. “How is he? He feels normal. A little freaked out, but I guess that  _ is _ normal, considering…”

Dean sat on the edge of the bed. “He’s Sam. He’s in one piece and he’s in his right mind. He’s weirded out, but he’s Sam so he’ll adjust.” He glanced up at me. “You sure you’re okay?”

“I’ll adjust.”

He eyed me carefully for a minute, then patted my knee and stood up. “It’s late,” he said. “If you were asleep, no one would question it.”

I smiled. “Thanks.” He shut the door behind him.

* * *

I didn’t think I’d be able to sleep, but the day  _ was _ exhausting enough that I did, for a few hours at least, until I was thrust awake by a series of nightmares so vivid I broke out in a cold sweat. I sat up and clicked the light on. It was 4:48.

I groaned, fell back against the pillows and threw my arm over my eyes. I’d been back in the warehouse, a horde of demons pressing against the cage bars, eyes black and teeth bared in sneers. Sam stood in the middle of them, grinning.

I shuddered at the memory and sat back up. There was no point going back to sleep at this hour. And anyway...that Sam was gone. The real Sam was here, in the bunker. 

How could I go back to how it was with him, if I kept dreaming of this other Sam tormenting me? Why couldn’t Castiel block  _ my _ memories, too?

My mouth was dry. I got out of bed and pulled on a hoodie, then padded down the hall to the kitchen. I took a glass from the cupboard and started to fill it from the faucet.

“Hey.”

I yelped and jumped, dropping the glass in my surprise. It shattered in the sink as I spun around to see Sam standing in the doorway, his hands held up apologetically.

“Whoa, sorry! Just me,” he said.

I wasn’t comforted by his appearance. The nightmare was too fresh, and he was too close. “Shit, I didn’t, um—”

He edged closer to the sink, slowly. “It’s okay,” he said. His voice was slow, gentle. He was worried. 

I glanced down at the broken glass. “I didn’t think anyone else was up,” I managed.

“Couldn’t sleep,” he said. I glanced up and his eyes were still glued to mine. “You too?”

I swallowed, my mouth now drier than it had been, and nodded. I took a half step away from him. My palms were sweating, my heart hammering, and I felt suffocated.

Finally, he looked into the sink and began picking up the glass. “I’ve got this,” he said, and before he could look back up I had darted out of the room. 

I didn’t know if he’d follow me. I could feel his concern, his fear, his absolute confusion, but I thought he had enough restraint to wait for me. I made it back to my room and stopped with my back to the door taking deep, slow breaths.

_Get a grip, Y/N,_ I thought. _It’s just Sam._ _This is all you’ve wanted._

I just didn’t know how to deal with the fear. Didn’t know how to see him the way I wanted to. Didn’t know how to pretend none of the past several months had happened.

The bunker was too small and I needed to breathe. It was just after 5 a.m., and it would still be dark for a few hours, and there was surely a foot of snow on the ground, but I was suddenly desperate for some freedom. I shoved on my tennis shoes and pulled up my hood, left my room and, checking around every corner for Sam, made my way to the front door, opened it, and stepped out.

The dry winter air hit my lungs like a punch to the chest, but it was crisp and fresh and so frigid it woke me right up. It was a perfectly still, dark morning, insulated in that blanket of silence that only comes with snow. The snow was untouched—Dean had parked in the garage, and no cars or plows had driven down here. I felt a sudden gush of peace.

My breath puffed out before me as I trudged into the snow. It was deep against the door, but out on the road it was probably only two or three inches—hardly the blizzard the weathermen had predicted. I started at a brisk walk, pulling my sleeves over my hands to keep my fingers warm, but broke into a light jog as I got closer to town and the snow became more packed down. My nose dripped and my lungs ached from the cold air, but my limbs and core warmed, my muscles stretching for the first time in awhile.

I was never a runner—not really. In my previous life, the one where I didn’t know about monsters, I’d trained for awhile as an ameatur boxer. At first it was because I was a single woman living alone in the city, but it became an outlet, a hobby, and then a sport. I wasn’t fantastic, but I wasn’t bad, and I credited my training in that gym with real fighters as part of the reason I’d survived with Sam and Dean and maybe even the reason, though they may not admit it, they’d let me join them. I could handle myself. Running had always been part of the conditioning that came with that, and as I spent more time on the road with the Winchesters, it became something Sam and I did together—time we shared without Dean—to talk or just breathe the same air, each in our own thoughts.

The more I ran, the calmer I felt, even though Sam’s uneasiness was still an itch beneath my skin. With each step, though, he faded into the background, replaced instead with my memories of him from before: Sam laughing at Dean’s expense over breakfast. Sam battle-weary but victorious after a good hunt. Sam’s arms, steady and sure, and his lips, soft but persistent, his impossible warmth.

I sighed out a long stream of fog and wondered if maybe I focused enough on those memories, I could beat back the bad ones and have him truly back. 

I’d reached town, having run a good mile and some, I thought, and the tips of my fingers were numb. Ahead of me, someone stepped out of a coffee shop, and I thought they wouldn’t mind if I stopped in to warm up. 

I slowed a few streets up to catch my breath, then sighed in relief as the warmth blasted through me as I opened the door and stepped inside. 

“Hey, what can we get for you?”

I pulled my hood down and shivered. A woman, maybe in her fifties, with strawberry blonde hair and warm eyes smiled at me. 

“Actually, can I just get some water? I just came in to warm up from my run.”

Her eyes widened. “Run? It’s 25 degrees and pitch black out, are you crazy?”

“Maybe,” I said. She slid a cup of water across the counter. “You sure you don’t want any coffee? On the house. Running in this weather...goodness.”

“Sure,” I said, thankful for the hospitality of small midwest towns. I gulped down half the water and she poured me a cup of coffee. 

“Cream or sugar?”

“No thanks.” I wrapped my hands around the off-white ceramic and wondered how things were going back at the coffee shop I’d left in Montana. 

There was a stack of day-old  _ Lebanon Times _ on the end of the counter. I picked one up. “Mind if I have this?” I asked.

She waved a hand. “Go right ahead. I was just about to pitch them anyway.”

I tucked it under my arm and took my water and coffee to one of the tables by the window.

There was nothing striking or particularly interesting on the front page—just a cover story about the snowstorm that, apparently, had left part of town without power when it first blew in and a few reports of car accidents due to dangerous road conditions. I flipped to the obituaries out of habit and saw nothing out of the ordinary—that was good. Then I sat, sipping my coffee and gradually warming up, and skimmed the rest of the paper as it slowly grew lighter outside. 

Bored of uneventful small-town news, I flipped to the real estate listings. It was an old habit; my family had moved around a lot as kids, and even when we weren’t my mother had liked to keep an eye on the market. I’d inherited the habit, and it was one of the few pieces of her I still had. 

A foreclosure listing for an old, run-down farmhouse the next town over caught my attention, and just as I was reading the description, three things happened at the same time:

One: I felt a sharp, strong tug of premonition in my navel, and all of the hairs on my arms and neck stood straight up as my skin erupted in goosebumps. 

Two: a lightbulb on the opposite side of the cafe popped, sending shards of glass exploding in all directions. Peggy and two other customers jumped in surprise, and Peggy called for the young man in the back to get a broom. 

Three: two rough looking, broad-shouldered, scruffy men entered the cafe. 

They turned their backs to me as they sauntered up to the counter and ordered, and I pulled the hood back over my head and hunched my shoulders, turning slightly away from them. I looked back at the listing and felt another tug. Across the room, one of the men laughed and Peggy joined in. They were local, then, or had at least been in before. They got their order and turned to sit, moving back in my direction, and I turned my face to look out of the window as they passed me.

They sat a few tables behind me and didn’t seem to notice me. I tilted my head to better hear their conversation, but couldn’t pick anything noteworthy up: Weather’s terrible. Probably another New England Superbowl this year. Someone named Jenny was being too nosy at work. One of the kids had the flu. 

_ No one knows we’re here _ , I reminded myself, but I was unconvinced. Something was nagging at me about these two, about that empty house, and it wouldn’t let go. 

I took a steadying breath and concentrated, reaching out with my empathy and feeling the room. Peggy was a tired, stressed, but otherwise cheery spirit behind the counter. The teenager who was now sweeping up the broken glass was irritated.  The old man at the counter was disgruntled about something. The two men who’d just shown up and caused me so much anxiety were...calm. Happy.

I started to relax. They were human. 

Then why did I still have a bad feeling about this?

Once more, I looked at the listing. That was definitely it—I felt pulled toward it like gravity. I took that page out of the paper, folded it, and pocketed it, then stood to leave. I needed to get back. 

I set my empty mug on the counter. “Thanks, Peggy,” I said. “I appreciate it.”

“No problem!” she chirped. “Be safe out there!”

_ You don’t even know _ , I thought, and I started to open the door.

“Hey, wait!” I turned. One of the men had stood up and started toward me. I tried not to panic. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

“Nope,” I said quickly. What did this guy want? “Just passing through.”

“Alright, well,” he said. “Be careful out there.”

His echo of Peggy’s now not-so-casual warning struck me. I took my hand off the door and let it bounce shut. I turned so I was facing him straight on. “Why?”

He shifted and I noticed the gun holstered at his hip, the flash of a blue collar beneath his jacket. 

“Nothing, officially,” he said. “But we’ve been getting reports about people down the road in Kensington running into some trouble. We’re just keeping an eye out here, too.”

I froze. Kensington was where the farmhouse listing was. I stared at him

He raised an eyebrow. “You okay, Miss?”

I swallowed. “Yeah. Just tired. Thanks.”

I had a thousand questions I wanted to ask him. What kind of trouble? Was he warning me, or threatening me? But more than interrogation, I wanted to leave. First light had broken at the horizon, and I was freaked.

I pushed out of the door and hurried to the street, breaking into a jog before I’d left the parking lot. By my watch it was quarter to seven. It would probably take me ten minutes to get back at my normal pace, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to take a direct route. Snow left tracks. 

Luckily, the town proper was set on a grid and most of the main roads were cleared, so that wouldn’t be an issue. Still, I headed north instead of east and wove back and forth between streets before cutting northeast and heading out onto School Street, jogging slowly until turning south on Route CC until I hit the unplowed areas on the outskirts of town and finally followed my own footsteps back to the bunker.

The detour had doubled my time, and when I got back it was past seven and mostly daylight. I peeled off my soaking shoes and socks inside the door and hurried down the stairs toward the library. Sam was seated at the table, his profile to me, staring intently at his laptop. 

I hesitated, unsure and anxious, just hovering in the doorway the same way I had when I was little and afraid of thunderstorms and would linger just outside my parents’ room before going in. Briefly, the Sam I’d had nightmares about last night, the one I’d run away from in the kitchen earlier, danced behind my retinas and almost sent me running back out, but the adrenaline pumping through my system from the jog and the... _ encounter _ I’d had at the cafe spurred my confidence.

Sam seemed to sense me watching him and glanced up. At first a warm smile started across his lips, and then he took in my heaving shoulders, pink nose and bare feet and it turned into a look of concern.

“Y/N, what—” he started to stand, but I stepped into the room and waved him down.

He hovered between sitting and standing a his confusion grew. “Did you  _ leave _ ? Where did you go _? _ ”

Instead of answering right away, I sat down across from him and rolled the damp bottoms of my sweatpants up. “I went for a run,” I said. 

I didn’t look up to catch his expression, but sorrow stabbed at me through his confusion for a moment, followed by guilt. He said, “I would’ve gone with you.”

“I just...you know.” Shit, but he was trying.  “Is Dean up?”

He shook his head. “Y/N, what’s going on?” 

As eager as I was to get to the bottom of whatever had happened, Dean was my point person. Sam had  _ no idea _ what was going on, and I didn’t know how much I should tell him at this point. So I deflected. I nodded toward his laptop. “What’re you doing?”

I could feel that he was frustrated and worried, but as I assumed he would, he let it go in favor of an attempt at normal conversation with me. He relaxed slightly, more comfortable now that I was the one coming to him.

“Just playing catch up. Trying to find out what all happened while I was gone.”

I racked my brain for anything noteworthy and came up empty. I’d spent the second half of 2010 just trying to survive each day, and most of 2011 avoiding the rest of the world in Costa Rica. I hadn’t really paid attention to  _ any _ kind of news. “Find anything interesting?”

He gave a small half-shrug. “Well, bin Laden.”

“Oh! I forgot about that.”

He quirked an eyebrow and I surprised myself with the affection I felt toward him at that. “You forgot about bin Laden?”

I swiped my sleeve across my nose and glanced down. “Well. After everything….it felt pretty insignificant.”

We were both silent then, sitting in our own thoughts about what had happened after that and I knew he wondered, and I knew he wouldn’t ask, and I didn’t know if I would be ready if he did. Already my heart rate was returning to normal, that post-run high fading, and I was starting to feel unsure of him again. 

_ Baby steps _ , I thought, but I was torn between wanting to throw myself across the table and into his arms and bolting. Again.

I stood up. “I need to shower,” I said, “Or at least change.”

He nodded. “I’ll be here.”

It still felt like more of a threat than a comfort. 

I grabbed a fresh set of clothes from my room and hit the showers. On my way back to my room, changed and warm, I turned a corner and walked smack into Dean.

“What the hell!” He was still not fully awake, rubbing sleep from his eyes.  
“Dean! Good. I have news, I think I found something—”

“Slow down, tiger,” he said. “Give a man five minutes. Jesus. I’ll meet you in the kitchen. Make some breakfast or something, would you?”

“Fine,” I said, but I lingered longer in my room, wanting Dean to make it to the kitchen before me. When I did get there, he was already scrambling eggs, and Sam was leaning against the counter, cup of coffee in hand, laughing.

And, damn, his laugh sounded good. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard it; laughter had been rare in those weeks before the end. He’d laughed when I’d been with him, sure, but I hadn’t realized until now how necessary the soul is for real laughter. 

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey.”

“Hey!” Dean barked. “What happened to starting breakfast?”

“What do I look like, your maid?”

Sam’s eyes were bright. “I see some things haven’t changed.”

I snorted. This was easier with Dean here. I poured myself a cup of coffee and turned around as Dean spooned eggs onto three plates and passed them to Sam, who set them on the table. We sat down.

“So,” Dean said. “What were you going to tell me?

Sam looked between us in confusion, either wondering what I had to say or when I’d had a chance to tell Dean, or why I only seemed interested in telling Dean. 

“Uh, well,” I said, “I went for a run.”

Dean blinked. “What? When?”

“This morning. Around five.”

Dean gawked at me mid-chew. A bit of egg was stuck on his lip. “I’m sorry, did you just say—”

“ _ Yes _ , Dean. I went for a run, in the dark, alone. Happy?”

He grunted and finished chewing. “No. What happened?”

“I ran into town and stopped at a coffee shop to warm up. I was reading yesterday’s local paper.”

“I’m sure  _ that _ was riveting.”

Sam elbowed him in the ribs and Dean glared at him indignantly.

I filled them in on what had happened in the cafe, from the moment I’d found the listing to the strange warning the man had given me. When I was finished, Dean said, “So, Kensington?”

I pulled the folded paper out of my pocket and slid it across the table. “Well, it definitely looks creepy,” he said, passing it to Sam for inspection. But Sam barely glanced at it before setting it down and leveling a stare at both of us.

“Okay,” he said. “What’s going on here? Something tells me this isn’t a normal case.”

Dean caught my eye across the table and then sighed and rubbed his forehead. “Guess we’re doing this now,” he said. “It’s like this: Heaven lost something important to them, called the Horn of Gabriel. Of course, demons are after this, too, so it’s a holy demonic arms race. Cas knew they’d need an empath to find it, so Y/N here was the obvious choice. But he didn’t know where she was, so he came to me.”

“Horn of Gabriel?”

“Opens the gates of Heaven or Hell. Any gate, actually. So you can imagine what that’d do in the wrong hands.”

I thought I saw Sam’s face pale slightly.  “And me? Because don’t tell me I’m just a coincidence.”

“No,” I admitted. I shifted in my seat. “Cas brought you back because...somehow the two of us are supposed to be able to find the Horn together.”

He scrunched up his eyebrows. “What? Why?”

I looked down. “I dunno. Some soul mate shit or something.”

“ _ What _ ?”

“Yeah, I dunno.”

“Anyway,” Dean interjected, saving me, “You pop back up yesterday, and Y/N suddenly gets a hunch about something…”

Sam nodded, still processing but, as always, catching on quickly. “So,” he said. “I guess we check out this house and go from there.”

“Yup,” Dean said, digging in his pocket. He tossed his phone at Sam, who fumbled it out of the air. “So get on it., Give them a call, say we want to look at it today.”

Sam rolled his eyes but stood and strode out of the kitchen, punching in the number from the listing as he went.

“Alright?” Dean asked, as soon as Sam was out of earshot.

I nodded. “Alright.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sam is back! It took a long time to get this right. I must have rewritten it 5 times from different points of view, with different emotions, etc. You might've noticed that some of the dialogue came straight out of Season 6, when Sam wakes up; I didn't want to mess with near-perfection in that case!
> 
> Thanks for reading and commenting! It keeps me motivated to finish this!


	23. Chapter 23

Kensington was only a thirty minute drive straight west from Lebanon. We met the real estate agent at 11:30. She was a heavyset woman with great hair and shiny, white teeth. 

“Hello!” she chirped as she got out of of a tan Honda Civic. She crossed over to us and shook our hands one at a time. “Karen Terry. Nice to meet you.”

We each introduced ourselves, and she began walking us toward the house. It didn’t look as run-down as I’d thought it might, though it was certainly a fixer-upper. The wood on the porch was rotted through in a few places, the siding needed a good powerwash, and the roof definitely need to be replaced. Still, once we stepped through the creaking door, while the inside was in need of an update, but mostly intact. 

“So, are you from around here or looking to move into the area?”

“We’re from Hastings,” Sam said. “But my family is in the renovation and restoration business, and someone pointed us here.”

“Oh!” she said, happy with that direction and seeing an opportunity. “Well, this is definitely a promising project, especially considering the acreage. It’s got—”

As she led Sam into the kitchen to talk about specifics, Dean and I lagged behind and then split up. I left Dean to explore the main floor and climbed the stairs. The wood floor gave slightly, as I stepped into the short upstairs hallway that led to the bedrooms. I knelt down to take a closer look and poked at it with my fingers; it felt soft, like fruit that had started to go bad. I took note and moved on down the hall.

The previous owners had pretty much cleared out their belongings when they’d jumped ship. White, sheer curtains hung over the bedroom windows, but that was any trace that someone had recently lived here. Looking more closely, I noticed small cracks above the windows,and the yellowing wallpaper suggested there’d maybe been a smoker in the house.

I checked out the upstairs bathroom next, but besides a hideous pink tub and a ring in the toilet, found nothing. The other two bedrooms held nothing but dead flies on the windowsills and dust on the floor. For good measure, I pulled out the EMF and clicked it on, but it was silent. 

I went back downstairs and rejoined Sam and Karen in the kitchen. They looked up from paperwork they were studying. “What’d you think?” Sam asked.

I nodded as if I were considering it. “A lot of waterpaper upstairs, and the bathtub is pink, but nothing we can’t handle.”

Sam gave a nod of approval. “Karen, if you don’t mind my asking, what’s the story with this house? Has it been vacant long?”

“Oh,” she said, “About three months.”

“Three months?”

“Yep. The previous owners lived in it for decades, raised their kids and everything. Then just packed up and left one day.”

Sam tilted his head. “They just left? Didn’t put it on the market?”

She nodded. “That’s right. Turned it all over to the bank. Weird, right?”

“Yeah...weird.”

Sam glanced at me. I thought of the rotting front steps, the soft spots of hardwood on the upstairs landing, the cracks running up the walls upstairs. For only having been vacant three months, the house was seemingly falling apart. As if to emphasise my thoughts, a brown leaf broke off from a dead plant on the counter and landed on the counter.

Dean walked in through the back door that led off the kitchen and cleared his throat. “There’s a cellar out back that’s locked. You have a key?”

Karen shook her head. “I’m afraid I don’t. They didn’t leave one. I’m sure we could have someone out to cut the lock if you felt you needed to see it, though.”

“That’s alright,” he said, but he caught Sam’s eye over her head. “What do you think, Sam? Y/N?”

“It definitely has potential,” I said, and Sam nodded his agreement. 

“Well, let’s talk it over over lunch,” Dean said, “I’m starving. Karen, mind if we get one of those info sheets?”

“Of course!” she said. “I’ve already given some information to your brother, along with my card.”

“Great,” Dean said, flashing a smile. “You’ll be hearing from us.”

She walked us out through the front door. “Nice to meet you! Hope to talk to you soon!”

We waved and we got into the Impala, and Dean began backing down the gravel driveway. “Well,” he said. “Any empath vibes, Y/N?”

“Not even a little,” I admitted. “What’s with the cellar?”

“It’s locked,” Dean said. “Kinda weird, don’t you think?”

“No...why would that be weird?”

Sam chuckled. “Small town. Farmhouse. No one lives here. Weird that the family would lock their cellar at all, especially when they leave, right?”

It hadn’t occurred to a former city girl like me. “I guess.”

Dean pulled into a diner’s lot and parked. Inside, he and Sam slid into opposite sides of a booth. I hesitated a moment, then sat down beside Dean. I didn’t miss the look that passed between them, or their different degrees of concern and puzzlement. 

We ordered the usual diner fare from the sallow-toned teenage waitress who brought us water, and while we waited for our food, Sam pulled out his laptop and the folder of information from Karen, spread it out on the table, and began typing away.

Dean looked at me. “I’m thinking we need to go back out there tonight with some bolt cutters and see if you pick anything up in that cellar.”

“You really think it’s worth it?”

“I do. One, you had some weird psychic vibe about that place. Two, some random cop warned you about this town having trouble. Three, it’s just  _ weird  _ that it’s locked.”

“Four, that house looked brand new a few months ago.”

We looked across the table at Sam. He had spun his laptop around to show us an image of the house we’d just been in. It was definitely the same house, but the paint was bright and clean, the roof looked brand new, and the porch wasn’t sagging. The picture, from Google’s Street View, was dated October 2011. 

Dean and I gaped. 

The waitress returned with our food then, and Sam moved his laptop and shifted some of the papers so he could eat with one hand while still searching whatever he was searching online.

“So, maybe there isn’t anything to do with the Horn of Gabriel, but it’s definitely a case.”

“What makes a house fall apart like that?” I wondered.

“Probably some freaky-ass spirit with a taste for Midwest Living,” Dean joked. Then his face darkened. “Or witches. Fuuuck—”

“Could be witches,” Sam agreed. “But why curse the house?” He reached in his pocket for a pen, found one, wrote a phone number at the top of one of the house sheets, and then closed the laptop and put everything else back in his bag. He picked it all up and scooted out of the booth. 

“I’m gonna give the previous owners a call. I’ll meet you guys outside.”

We watched him walk out of the diner and over to the Impala. He was already punching numbers into his phone as he got into the passenger seat.

“Well, Sam’s back to normal,” Dean grunted. “You mind telling me why you’re on this side of the booth? You seemed like you were doing better.”

I shrugged. “It’s  easier having a case to focus on, but….it's hard to explain. It's just..weird.”

“Yeah, Sam definitely thought it was.”

“I’m sorry?”

He sighed. “Look,” he said. “You’re gonna have to talk to him at some point.”

I slid out of the booth and switched to the seat across from him. “Yeah? And tell him what? The truth isn’t exactly an option right now. Or ever.”

“Damn it, I don’t know!” he snapped. “Chalk it up to Lucifer, if you have to, or make something up, but I can’t deal with the awkward.”

“Well, gee, I’m so sorry you’re uncomfortable.” I crossed my arms.

“Don’t do that,” he said. “It’s not about that and you know it.”

He glanced out the window and suddenly jumped up, struggling to get out of the booth with any speed. “Shit!”

Startled, I looked from him to the parking lot. Sam was out of the car and running toward two men on the sidewalk who were, for lack of a better phrase, beating the shit out of each other. 

Dean’s sudden movement had drawn the attention of the few other customers in the diner, who were now craning their necks toward the window. Dean was already out of the door, but I was close behind him.

When I joined the small crowd of onlookers, Sam was already pushing between the two of them when Dean grabbed the closest guy and pulled him back. “What the hell?!” the guy shouted, trying to break free of Dean’s grip on his arm.

“You’re tellin’ me!” Dean barked. “Sam?”

Sam had one giant arm thrown across the chest of the other guy to hold him back. The man had a red mark on his cheek that would probably turn into a bruise in a few hours. His chest was heaving. “Fucker almost backed into me!”

“You weren’t watching where you were going!”

“Alright, alright, calm down,” Sam said. “ _ Did _ he hit you?”

He glanced at a white Ford pickup a few feet away. “No.”

“I stopped as soon as he laid on his damn horn!”

Already the two men were relaxed enough that Sam and Dean could let them go. “We good?” Dean huffed. They nodded, turned around, and went their own ways. 

The three of us stared at them, then at each other. Dean said, “Didn’t you say that cop said people were getting into trouble in this town?”

I nodded. 

Sam was already heading back to the car. “Come on,” he said. “I have an idea.”

Dean ran back inside to pay the bill, and we were on the road back to the bunker.

“So I got in touch with the owners,” Sam said before we’d even left the parking lot or had a chance to ask. “And it started with what sounds like early signs of a haunting: flickering lights, cold spots. But then—get this—cracks start showing up in the foundation. The wood starts rotting. Plants in the house die. The family starts getting sick, they’re arguing a lot. The wife started hearing things and then they starting  _ seeing _ the spirit, and they got the hell out of dodge.”

“So it is a spirit,” Dean said. “So what, it just showed up after however many decades?”

“It had to come with something, right?” I said. “Maybe they brought something back from a trip?”

Sam nodded. “Right. So I asked them why the cellar was locked, and they hung up on me.”

“So whatever brought this ghost, it’s down there.”

“Right.”

“I didn’t know ghosts could decay a house,” I said.

“Or a whole town,” Dean added. “This whole town seems sick.”

“That’s why I want to get back, do some research. The bunker is a plethora of archives and lore.”

I smiled despite myself because that was the Sam I knew—one who used words like  _ plethora _ in the middle of ordinary sentences.

* * *

 

“Got it!”

I looked up from the dusty tome I’d been scanning and Dean shook himself from the half-doze he’d slipped into over research. We’d been at the books for three hours. “Huh?” he grunted.

“Spirits can’t decay houses, but curses can. When an object is powerful enough and a spirit happens to attach to it, it creates a curse.”

“ ‘Happens to’? Sounds unlikely.”

Sam shrugged. “Not necessarily. Spirits attach to all kinds of things for all kinds of reasons. They might even be drawn to powerful items.”

“Okay,” Dean said, stretching. “So what kind of item are we dealing with? Because I’m not about to march in there and get hexed.”

“I bet it has something to do with the Horn,” I realized. “Why else would I have been pulled there?”

Dean looked at me sharply. “You don’t think it  _ is _ the Horn, do you?”

“I doubt it. But I have no idea.”

“Anyway,” Sam said. “We just have to find the object and remove the curse.”

“And we do that by…?”

“There’s probably a ritual,” Sam said, standing and heading down the hall toward the dungeon and the masses of archived files.

“Someone’s all business,” Dean mumbled, shutting the book in front of him with a snap. He checked his watch. “Guess if we’re heading back out there we should prep.”

I groaned. It was just after 4:30.  It would be dark by the time we made it back to the house. I wasn’t looking forward to digging around in a haunted, cursed cellar in the first place; adding night on top of that would be even worse.

While Sam was still digging up what he could on whatever ritual, Dean and I loaded up salt rounds, doubled checked flashlight batteries, and made sure we had at least one iron weapon. We were packing weapons into duffels in the library when Sam came back, flipping through a folder. 

“Well,” he said. “The good news is we just have to get the spirit to jump from whatever it’s currently inhabiting to something else, and then burn  _ that _ .”

“And the bad?” Dean asked.

“The bad news is that spirits don’t typically like leaving places. But,” he placed the file  on the table in front of Dean and me to look at. “There’s a trick.”

* * *

It was dark at the farmhouse—real dark, with no streetlights and nothing but maybe a night light on somewhere inside the house. I was thankful for the snow— it made the moon and starlight seem that much brighter.

Dean made quick work of the padlock on the cellar door. We flung the doors open and they landed on the grass on either side of the now gaping maw that led underground. As soon as the cellar was open, the smell hit us, billowing out of the opening like the breath of some long-dead beast. We turned away, covering our faces.

“Fuck,” Dean coughed. 

“Rotting meat,” Sam choked. “Either literally or part of the curse.”

We stood there, elbows pressed against our noses, staring into the black. Our flashlights were only slivers in the dark, small pinpricks of light on the concrete floor below.

The smell would either fade or get worse, but it wouldn’t leave. I pulled my collar up over my mouth and nose and started down. Sam and Dean followed behind. Each of us carried a bag of supplies and weapons. 

The cellar—thankfully—wasn’t terribly large, but it was full of junk. The four walls enclosed a space that was  maybe the size of the bunker’s library, but they were all lined with shelves upon shelves of old books, dusty shoeboxes, a variety of garden tools, and even stacks of old furniture. The center was open except for an old workbench and a few sawhorses.

“This should be fun,” Dean muttered, setting his bag on the workbench. The three of us quickly began setting up, starting with the battery-operated camping lanterns we placed around the room. With that done, the cellar was less a potentially haunted and cursed nightmare and just a basic hole in the ground. The smell had lessened, but most likely not because it was gone, only because we were used to it. 

On the smooth surface of the workbench, Sam began painting the symbol he’d found in the Men of Letters file as Dean meticulously surrounded the whole thing in a ring of salt. I grabbed an iron crowbar from one of the bags and began searching the shelves for the artifact we’d come for...whatever  _ that _ might be. I had no idea what I was looking for.

It was no surprise the house’s previous owners had abandoned these things when they’d left—it was mostly useless or easily replaceable. The books were all old farmers’ almanacs and encyclopedias and a few others whose titles were so worn and whose pages were so yellow and crumbling they were indecipherable.  Many of the shoeboxes contained nothing more than nails or screws or other hardware. There was an entire box of what looked like old receipts, but the ink had faded completely from most of them. On the first wall, the only thing I found of any interest was a set of Russian nesting dolls and a rusting, dented trumpet. I picked it up and turned it over in my hands.

“I’m guessing that would be too obvious?”

I jumped. I hadn’t heard Sam come up behind me. He stepped away. “Sorry,” he said, but the expression on his face wasn’t apologetic: it was concerned. Frustrated too, maybe. I could sense both emotions.

I sighed. “It’s okay. Just...focused.” I put the trumpet back on the shelf. “And yeah...well, I don’t know. I didn’t hear a Hallelujah chorus when I picked it up.”

I looked to where Dean was searching across the room. “Anything?” I called.

“Hell if I know,” he said. “But it’s more of a junkyard in here than Bobby’s.”

Sam crossed back to the workbench. He’d set out a variety of ingredients—herbs and the odds and ends only found in alchemy shops—and now he double-checked the list from the file. As he did, the lantern nearest him flickered briefly and went out. 

The three of us exchanged glances. Sam picked it up and shook it. Nothing happened. He clicked the light on and then off; it remained dark.

“Spirit would’ve put them all out,” I said. “Not just one.”

“There’s some extra batteries in the trunk,” Dean said. “I’ll get them.”

He headed back up the stairs as Sam continued fiddling with the supplies for the ritual he had planned, and I turned back to the shelves. I had reached the back wall, and as I turned, something lying on the floor a few feet away caught my eye. I walked over to it, crouched down, and picked it up.

It wasn’t heavy, exactly, but it had weight to it the way a magnet or a denser metal might. It was a perfectly smooth, flat disk about the size of a quarter and made of black stone. It felt like a river rock but had a shine to it like black glass, and had miniscule carvings all around its edges, the way the face of a clock would. A hole no wider than a toothpick ran directly through the center.

I straightened and walked toward one of the lanterns to get a better look at the carvings and felt a jolt of excitement. They were Enochian glyphs. 

“Hey, I think this is it!” I called, moving toward the workbench. Sam looked up from the file he was rereading, and I watched his expression morph from surprise to fear at the same time the temperature in the cellar plummeted.

“BEHIND!” he shouted, and I spun, the crowbar in my right hand moving with me as I twisted and dragged it through the spirit behind me faster than I had time to even register it. It vanished.

“I guess you’re right,” Sam said, holding out his hand. I dropped the disk into his palm. He raised it closer to his face to study it.

“Everybody good down there?” Dean called from above.

“Yeah! We—”

A powerful wind suddenly whooshed through the cellar and rushed up the stairs. We heard a shout from Dean and then it was sucked back in, racing into us, sounding like a freight train. Over the roar, I heard a creak of hinges and then a deafening slam. I met Sam’s eyes across the room, and the last thing I saw before every light went out was the spirit—ghastly and eyeless—lurking over his shoulder. 

We were thrust into darkness as I shouted a warning, and I heard Sam hit the ground with a grunt. There were the sounds of a scuffle, and then a deafening bang as the sawed off fired.

“Get in the circle!” Sam  yelled, but I was already there, balancing on the edge of the workbench. I felt him sit behind me, our backs nearly touching. He picked up a lantern and I heard him fiddling with it. Above us, Dean was banging on the cellar door.

“We’re okay!” I hollered, and the banging stopped. 

Muffled, Dean called back, “I’m gonna try to find a way in. Hang in there.”

“Here.” Sam shifted behind me, and I heard the click of a lighter and turned around. The flame lit up between us, just illuminating our faces and part of the workbench. Sam used it to re-light the candles around the symbol he’d painted, then placed the disc I’d found in the center. He picked up the file from the bunker and scanned it again.

“So,” he said. “One of us reads the incantation, then the other has to take the item outside of the circle and lure the spirit out again, then jump back in here, place it back in the center, and jump back out with something similar to re-bind it.”

“Similar how?”

Sam dug in his pocket and procured a quarter. “This should work.”

“Okay,” I said. “You read, I’ll walk.”

He nodded, held the file closer to the light, and started reciting the Latin incantation that would start the ritual. When he was about halfway through he nodded at me, and I lifted the disc from the sigil, picked the crowbar up in my other hand, and stepped outside of the salt circle.

I suppose I’d been expecting that, the moment I left the safety of the salt, the spirit would be on me. As it was, nothing happened, and I just stood there, wielding the crowbar in my right hand and tightly clutching the disc in my left fist, waiting for an attack that didn’t seem to be coming. Above, I could hear Dean fiddling with the cellar door, his occasional curses.

Sam finished the incantation, closed the file, and looked up at me. I imagined he could just barely see me on the edge of the candlelight. 

“Well,” he said. “I guess we wait.”

The cellar was dark but for the small circle of candlelight illuminating the workspace. Leaning against the table as he was, tracing the file with his index finger for any clue as to how to convince a spirit to appear, Sam’s face and hands stood out in the light, the rest of him fading into shadow. I stood beyond the light, feeling shielded in the darkness, somehow unseen and separate from him.

He sensed my gaze and looked up, eyes trying to find mine in the shadows. “You okay?”

He had to know that I wasn’t, but my expression was hidden in the dark. I quickly looked down at the metal in my hands. “What do you think this is?”

“I didn’t get a good look at it,” he admitted. He slid off of the bench and came closer, crossing the salt line and pausing just at the edge of the light. He held out his hand, and I stepped toward him and passed the disc to him.

He raised it to eye-level, turning it over with a watchmaker’s care, scrutinizing it like an archaeologist in some long-abandoned tomb. “Enochian,” he said, and I nodded. “It reminds me of something...a sundial, maybe?”

“What would a sundial have to do with finding the Horn of Gabriel?”

Sam shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

He passed it back to me and caught my eye. “Y/N—”Above us, we heard Dean slamming into the cellar door with what sounded like a baseball bat.

“I’m gonna see if we can open it from the inside,” I said, and turned before he could reply. 

But, of course, it was useless. Try as I might, the door wasn’t moving. I relayed that to Dean when he paused in his hammering. “You might as well just save your energy,” I said. “Because this spirit isn’t letting us out.”

“Hurry up and get this over with then,” was his muffled reply. “It’s cold as fuck out here.”

“Go wait in the car!” I suggested, and trudged back down. Sam was leaning against the workbench, the file ignored and useless beside him.

“I guess this spirit is more worried about keeping us here than anything else,” I said. 

“Make sense,” Sam said. “If we can’t leave, we can’t take anything, including him, out. But he’s using a lot of energy on that door—probably why he hasn’t appeared again.”

I sighed and began pacing the room, picking up random items from the shelves in the hope of setting off the spirit again, but nothing happened. I felt Sam’s eyes tracking my movements, and an instant before he started speaking I felt what was coming, too.

“Can I ask you something?”

I bent down and picked a horseshoe off the bottom shelf. “Sure.”

He hesitated only briefly, just slightly uncomfortable. Anxious, even. “Are you afraid of me?”

It wasn’t the question I’d expected, and it threw me. Maybe because it wasn’t like Sam to be so direct. Maybe it threw me because I hadn’t hidden my feelings from his as well as I’d hoped. 

I didn’t respond right away, surprised as I was, fearing he knew something he shouldn’t know, and he followed up with, “I mean...I get it, if you are. It can’t have been easy to see Lucifer use me to do what he did. Shit, he killed you, Y/N.”

I almost laughed. Lucifer  _ had _ snapped my neck back in Stull Cemetery, but he’d done it so quickly and painlessly that it hadn’t even registered until Castiel brought me back. I didn’t even remember it; only knew that it had happened. I was relieved; this was something I could talk about. This was something concrete I could lay blame on. I turned from the shelves. He’d straightened up and taken a few steps closer to me, was just beyond arm’s length. “Sam—”

“There’s a lot I don’t remember,” he said. “And probably more I wasn’t conscious for. And so for whatever I—he—did, I’m sorry.”

Sam was distraught, but my heart was pounding, and I felt split between my own desperation to comfort him and the panic of just being trapped in this enclosed space with him, but the pureness of his sorrow staved off any immediate urge to flee. I swallowed and stepped closer to him, shaking my head.

“It’s not you, Sam. Just...before...The last time I saw you alive, it wasn’t you wearing your face. The difference is that now I can feel you; I know it’s you, but my brain is getting confused when it sees your face and remembers...the rest.”

Sam nodded, face drawn. I could barely make out his features in the dark, but we were close enough to touch now, if one of us reached out, and I could feel Sam battling himself over whether to do just that. 

He put his hands in his coat pockets instead. “I won’t push you. And I know time has passed for you, and I get it if you’ve moved on, but—”

This time I couldn’t help it—I did laugh,and then clapped a hand over my mouth. “Sorry!” I said, growing serious at his expression. “I just—I haven’t. I tried to. And you’re here now, Sam, and I want....” What did I want? A reset button? To erase the last year, or at least the last few months? “I want things to be back to normal,” I said truthfully. “But I need time, I guess.”

He nodded, a little sadly, I thought.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and he said, “I wish—”

But we were interrupted, thankfully, but a low wailing as the spirit appeared behind me, an icy hand brushing my shoulder. Sam lunged forward and grabbed me by the forearms, yanked me to him and then spun, shoving me toward the salt circle. I crossed, and he was right behind me, his chest against my back as I set the disc in the center of the sigil. Outside the salt line, the spirit howled, flashing back and forth as it attempted to get inside, to reclaim its hold on the artifact. 

Sam pressed the quarter into my palm. “Go,” he said, and began reading the incantation to unbind the spirit.

Free of the salt-barrier, the spirit rushed me. I held the crowbar in front of me, creating a makeshift barrier between us, and held the quarter aloft in my left hand. “You want it?” I goaded. “It’s yours.” But Sam wasn’t ready. I continued backing up, away from the ghost, holding the crowbar like a cross in a Dracula movie, shooting furtive glances to Sam, awaiting his signal.

He kept reciting the Latin, and the spirit flickered, weakened, maybe, now that it was being forced out of its residence. I made my way around the workbench, just outside the salt, and when Sam shouted, “NOW!”  before continuing the incantations, his words growing louder and faster, more of a chant now. I scratched a hole in the salt with the toe of my boot and slammed the quarter down in the center of the sigil just as Sam snatched up the disk and dropped it straight into the bag of salt, chanting the whole time. 

The spirit wailed, and the room became a maelstrom as wind filled it from seemingly all directions. Sam and I were thrown backward as a powerful gust shot from the spirit, and then the wind rushed from the depths of the cellar up the stairs, flinging the doors open with a deafening crash. The spirit leapt, almost teleporting, and seized the quarter from the bench, grinned wickedly, and vanished, taking the wind with it.

Footsteps thundered down the stairs, chasing the beam of a flashlight, and Dean appeared above us. We sat up, groaning at the soreness.

“You two okay?” 

We nodded and got to our feet. Sam walked over to the workbench, looked around, and then found and picked up the quarter. “I think it worked,” he said. 

* * *

Outside, the workbench cleared off and the gear packed back into the Impala, Dean sprinkled salt and lighter fluid on the quarter and struck a match. When it hit the ground, the quarter was engulfed in flames.

“You know, quarters are pretty much indestructible,” Y/N said.

“So’re bones,” Dean said. “Doesn’t matter—it’ll still purify it and put him to rest.”

Sam watched her across the flames—watching that orange glow dance across her face—and wondered what it would take to have her back, to gain her trust again. The fear, the hesitation, the way she flinched away from him when he moved too suddenly, the deliberate space she put between them, was understandable, but so unlike her. She’d seen him black-eyed and dripping blood at the mouth, watched him betray his brother, lost him to Ruby for awhile, and she had never backed down. He remembered, through a haze, Lucifer staring her down, face inches from hers, making threats before he vanished with Sam’s body. Y/N hadn’t moved, hadn’t flinched, hadn’t done anything except follow Dean to the very end.

But maybe there was more he didn’t remember. He made a note to ask Dean. 

And maybe all it was, really, was the normal toll of time lapsing on a relationship. While Sam felt that he’d blinked and gone from the cemetery to the bunker, she’d lived that whole time apart. And he couldn’t compare her to Dean; a lifetime of hunting, a lifetime in Hell, and Dean could more or less take it all in stride. But Y/N...she wasn’t born into this. And maybe losing him had shaken her to her core, and she couldn’t come back. 

The fire burned out, they were back in the car, headed back to the Bunker. Y/N sat in the Impala’s back seat, and Sam thought the car had never felt so unbalanced. 


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry for this delay! This chapter has been written forever, but I kept going back to tweak it and make adjustments to try to get it right. I finally decided to leave it alone. Here it is-nice and long to make up for the break!

It wasn’t late by the time they got back—only about 10 p.m.—but they left the gear and further research for tomorrow and instead tore into burgers and beers. Dinner finished, they simply sat, basking in a job completed, even if it had only opened up more questions.

Dean stretched across the back of his chair and groaned as his spine cracked. “Damn if it doesn’t feel good to wrap a good salt n’ burn,” he said, crossing his arms across his chest comfortably. 

“Beats construction work, doesn’t it?” Y/N teased, and Dean nodded. 

“Construction work?” Sam wondered. He’d always imagined, maybe expected, that Dean would find a job as a mechanic.

Dean nodded. “Lisa’s brother-in-law has a company in Cicero, so she set me up. It was alright. But, yeah, low job satisfaction.” 

“Comparatively,” Y/N added. 

It suddenly occurred to Sam that he had no idea what Y/N’d been doing the past year. “What about you? Did you go back to library research?” He remembered, vividly, that first meeting at the university library, the case they’d worked in St. Louis, her amused expression when they asked for information about local folklore. She’d slid so easily into their lives as an informant, another point person for research, and Sam had found himself calling her frequently to ask for her help, enduring unending teasing from Dean every time he asked her to look into something he could’ve just as easily found on his own, just for an excuse to talk to her. 

She gave a sad smile and shook her head. “No. I actually left the country.”

Sam raised his eyebrows. They had talked at length in those days before the end about where she might go, what she might do. Sam had worried about them both, sure, but he knew Dean’s word was good and that he’d be in good hands with Lisa; Y/N, at that point, had lost about as much as they had and didn’t have the same kind of resource. She’d promised to stay out of the life, to move on, but hadn’t had a concrete plan. Living abroad was so far out of her wheelhouse that it took Sam a minute to process that. 

“Why?” He failed to keep the surprise out of his voice, the incredulity, trying to maintain gentleness and curiosity and normal conversation for her sake—for their sake.

“I wanted to disappear,” she said plainly, without a trace of resentment or sadness. “I wanted to be somewhere...different. And a friend of mine from college had done a program in Costa Rica that got her a job teaching English and a place to stay, and I qualified for it, so I went.”

“What was it like?” Sam was desperate to keep the conversation going, to keep her talking to him, to keep her talking about something normal and good and avoid the reason she’d needed to run so quickly and so suddenly in the first place. 

“It’s beautiful,” she breathed, and for a minute seemed lost in reflection, but she shook herself. “But it’s behind me now.”

He thought he sensed a tinge of regret in her voice, and it stung him though it had no right to. He wanted to ask her everything, to listen to her spin stories of that world, of everything she’d seen and done; he wanted every intricate and inane detail that he’d missed down to what she ate for breakfast each morning and what color were the walls in the house she lived in. He felt such a powerful longing to hold her, a deep sorrow that she was in so many ways beyond his reach, and he resolved to fix it, somehow.

Dean must have sensed Sam’s sudden broodiness, because he sat up straighter and gestured across the table at the disc. Sam had strung a chain through it, to make it easier to keep track of.  “So...what do we think this is? Because I’m not buyin’ the sundial theory, Sam.”

Sam pulled it toward himself and looked at it again. The pattern of markings around the perimeter was familiar to him. He’d originally thought of a clock, but he realized it wasn’t quite right for that. 

“Okay, serious question,” Y/N said. She’d finished one beer and was opening another as she spoke. “How does a holy artifact like this end up in the middle of East Jesus nowhere and get possessed by a spirit?”

“Beats me,” Sam said. “How does the Horn of Gabriel just go missing?”

“Now that,” Dean said, pointing his bottle at Sam, “is the million dollar question.”

“A toast,” Y/N said, raising her beer, “to the thousands of bullshit scenarios we three seem to end up in. May they burn in a place far more remote than Hell, so that they don’t come back to haunt us later.”

“And may the dicks with wings learn where to shove it,” Dean added.

They clinked bottles and Y/N finished hers off, then stood. “Well, I’m officially relaxed. We can worry about this in the morning, right?” she indicated the disc. 

“Far as I’m concerned,” Dean said.

Sam picked it up and held it out to her. “You should hold onto it. It’s more yours than ours.”

She shrugged and slipped the chain over her head. “Anyway...goodnight.” She waved her way out of the room. Sam watched her go.

“Sammy.”

Sam turned around to Dean. “Yeah? What?”

Dean just raised an eyebrow. “Time, dude.”

Sam sighed. “I know.” He rested his forearms on the table and turned the bottle around in his hands, absently picking at the label. “It’s just, I’m on unfamiliar territory here. I don’t know what this time has done for her… and I barely remember what happened with Lucifer. I—” he stopped, noticing Dean’s expression. “What?”

“Sound familiar?”

The agony of Sam’s four months without Dean suddenly slammed into him. He squeezed his eyes shut and pushed it away. “That was different.”

“Was it?” Dean asked. “I came back and you were someone else, Sam. I was half-insane from Hell and I didn’t know where I fit with you anymore.”

“So you’re saying…what?”

“I’m saying I know how she feels.  _ And  _ how  _ you  _ feel. Except you’re back with a clean slate, and she’s the one who’s had to figure out how to live without you. Only difference is her last memories of you are of Lucifer.”

“But so are yours, and you’re not... _ cowering _ away from me.”

Dean leaned forward across the table, fingers laced together. “Sam,” he said, leveling a hard stare at his brother. “That girl loves you more than I love Lisa, my baby, and maybe even you. She is one of the toughest, most fearless, ballsiest hunters I have ever met. And she isn’t stupid; she knows you’re not the Devil. But you know as well as I do that nightmares and time can do a number on a person. The reason I’m not trying to kill you or get the hell away from you is that I’ve had more experience dealing with that shit. Scary as Lucifer was wearing your suit, he had nothing on Hell with Alastair.

“And,” he said, taking a drink and wiping his sleeve across his lips, “I saw you take control back at the end. I watched you save the world. Y/N didn’t.”

Sam blew out a long breath and sank back in the chair. He was suddenly overcome with exhaustion, like he hadn’t slept in weeks, even though he’d only been back on Earth—alive—for two days. Across the table from him, Dean stood up. “Get some sleep, Sam. Give her time.” He clapped Sam on the shoulder as he headed out of the room. 

Sam sat a while longer, his thoughts spiraling. 

* * *

The disc was a constant coolness against Y/N’s chest. Unlike any other metal, it didn’t warm against her skin but maintained a chill even after a night of sleeping with it hanging from her neck. She brought this up as they gathered in the library the next morning, drinking coffee and preparing for a day of research. Dean had put out a call for Castiel, but he must have been occupied elsewhere, as he hadn’t shown up.

“So, basically, it’s defying the laws of physics,” she said. “But not doing much else.” She had taken it off and handed it to Sam. He was copying down the Enochian symbols in the same pattern, a scroll open beside him to translate. 

“There’s a lab here, isn’t there?” he asked. “Maybe we could run some tests.”

“I think we’re wasting our time,” Dean said. “Cas could probably just tell us what it is, when he ever shows.”

“Well, in the meantime, we’re researching,” Y/N retorted, grabbing a file. 

Dean huffed, muttered something like “nerds” under his breath, and then pulled an ancient book toward him. 

They spent the next four days pretending to be intently focused on research, but in truth, none of their hearts were in it. The most they’d deciphered was that the Enochian around the edges of the disc said something about gates, and as unhelpful as that was, they were content to let it be. There was no imminent threat of danger, and Castiel’s absence gave them no reason to hurry.

The whole case felt strange to Sam, but he attributed it to having shown up in the middle of it without a lot of context. He thought he understood the importance of finding the Horn, but neither Y/N nor Dean seemed overly concerned. Dean, normally driven to save the day, appeared bitter, and Sam wasn’t sure why. He’d apparently been brought back from the dead for the job, but Dean seemed to resented it as much as he had everything to do with Heaven.

But Y/N, Sam thought, just couldn’t focus. He caught her rereading pages or skimming them too quickly to absorb anything. She got up and left the room frequently for various stretches of time. When Sam asked Dean about it, he shrugged and said he had no idea, maybe she needed space, to let it go.

He couldn’t let it go, but still, any research they did was half-hearted. They laid low, using research as an excuse to hole up in the bunker and not look for any new cases. It was different, new, strange territory for Sam, and it only solidified to him how long he’d been gone, that Dean and Y/N were both so far removed from hunting that they didn’t  _ want _ to even consider any unrelated cases.

Instead, they began the slow, uncomfortable work of reacquainting themselves with one another. While Dean was markedly different, more domestic, Sam thought, it was easy to slip back into their old routines. Sam bitched about Dean’s messes. Dean bitched about Sam’s “OCD.” They had entire conversations without speaking more than two words. But Sam noticed the hyper-alertness, too; Dean reminding Sam to take breaks from research, telling him to eat more, asking him a thousand times a day if he was okay. It drove Sam crazy, but he couldn’t blame him, despite how fine he felt. 

But it was harder with Y/N. Sam found himself walking on eggshells, calculating his every move and word, worrying that he was too remote or too close, too friendly or not warm enough. Would he startle her, if he spoke up? What could he talk to her about without bringing up the past? Would he frighten her if he entered a room too quickly? Was he allowed to touch her? Would he ever be able to stop thinking this way? He caught himself absently reaching for her hand, brushing against her when she passed him in the hallway. She’d catch him watching her over his laptop and he’d look away, ashamed and then angry that he had to be, and he knew he couldn’t hide  _ those  _ feelings from her, either. 

He found himself apologizing a lot, affirming her that it was okay. It wasn’t, not really; he couldn’t hide that from her any more than he could hide his affection, but it would have to do for now. Sam Winchester was far from the most patient man in the world, but he was alive, and not just alive but whole and well, and as long as she and Dean were near to him he felt he could weather anything. And even if she never came back to him, if they spent the rest of their lives in this weird dance of fear and wanting, he could live with that, too. Happily, probably not, but his life had never lived up to normal people’s standards of happiness anyway. Why should it be different now? 

But everyday it got better. He could sense her relaxing more, breaking out of whatever shell had built around her. She spent longer stretches of time alone with him, her shoulders and jaw no longer stiff with tension. She laughed more, he thought, and not just when it was all three of them. She kept her distance, but whereas before she’d deliberately positioned herself with Dean or the table or something else between them, she didn’t jump when her hand brushed his, she let her fingers linger on his, she picked stray hairs and fuzz off his sleeves, though she never lingered too long beside him.

He ached for her; she was so close to him and yet he couldn’t hold her, couldn’t comfort her from fear of himself, couldn’t break through small talk to really reach her on any deeper level. She was guarded, and he was gentle around her but internally desperate to cling to her. He slept little; before Lucifer, he’d spent every night beside her, and his bed felt cold as he imagined her alone and afraid a few rooms away from him, using all his self control to remain where he was. 

At breakfast on the fifth day after finding the disc, Dean announced, “I was thinking that we should pay a visit to Bobby. Figure he’d probably like to see Sam, and I don’t know about you, but I could use a change of scenery.”

Sam perked up at that. He’d spoken to Bobby briefly the day after they’d come back from Kensington, but he’d suggested laying low awhile, just in case. “Not that I don’t want to visit Bobby, but shouldn’t we focus more on, I dunno, saving the world?”

“Sure,” Dean agreed. “Other than fiddling with this rock, what would you suggest? When Cas shows up and tells us what to do with it, I’m game. Until then...let’s take a break. Besides, maybe Bobby can tell us something.”

“He has a point,” Y/N said. The bunker was stuffy; there was still a tension between the three of them, and Bobby’s presence would surely ease some of that; he had that effect. 

* * *

  
If Bobby felt any trepidation about Sam, it was so small I couldn’t easily perceive it, and he certainly gave no outward sign to the boys. He greeted us at the front door when we arrived, and after a cursory head to toe scan of Sam, he gave a nod and pulled him in for a hug, holding him a moment longer than was normal. “It’s good to see you, boy,” he gruffed, and Sam responded with just a slight huff, just a little insecurity, maybe a little shame. He blinked back a few tears, I thought. 

“So,” Bobby said, once we were seated in the living room, a bag of barbeque chips open on the coffee table, “Besides the friendly visit, what’s going on?”

I pulled the chain from around my neck and passed the disc over to Bobby. He examined it a moment then said, “Huh. Looks like some kind of heavenly compass.”

Sam’s mouth fell open, then he laughed, a hand smacking his forehead. “Of course!” he said. “I can’t believe we missed that!”

Dean and I exchanged a look. “Of course,” Dean said. “Obvious…”

Bobby rolled his eyes. “You’ve got a whole bunker of knowledge and it took me to figure that one out? Idjits.”

“We didn’t try too hard,” Dean said defensively, kicking his feet up on the coffee table. A look from Bobby and he put them down on the floor. “We figured Cas would probably fill us in, next time he drops by.”

“Well,” Bobby said. “Since you’ve got nothin’ better to do, I have a few projects that I’ve been putting off doin’...”

An afternoon of cataloging new lore books, cleaning and organizing the weapons cabinet, and breaking down junkers in the yard while Bobby worked the phones in between researching a case for a hunter out in Arizona, and I thought Dean was beginning to regret this vacation. 

I spent most of that afternoon in Bobby’s library, shelving books and files that had been scattered around over the past week’s worth of cases. He had a pile of research about Heaven, angels, the Horn of Gabriel that he’d apparently grown frustrated with and shoved to the side; I restacked it and left it there. 

Bobby was in and out of the library that day, between the phones in the kitchen and research. At one moment, when he’d paused long enough in his muttering over an ancient tome about Banshees, I casually said, “You know, you should think about digitizing some of this.”

He looked up sharply. “And why would I wanna do that?”

Laughter preceded Sam into the room. “You haven’t given up on that, huh?” Years ago, I’d tried to convince Bobby of the same thing, and years ago, he hadn’t even bothered to respond with anything beyond a scathing look. 

“Seriously, Bobby, I could do it for you. You’d make this available to any hunter at any time...it’d save you a lot of work.”

He was momentarily excited about the prospect, but he tramped it down. “Sure, put me outta a job,” he grumbled, and trudged out of the room as one of the phones rang in the kitchen. 

I looked at Sam and he shrugged. “It’s just how he is,” he said. “You need any help? I’m finished downstairs.”

I looked around at the remaining mess of books; there was an entire box that came from who-knows-where full of dusty old Egyptian texts I hadn’t even attempted to grapple with yet. 

“Sure,” I said, nodding toward the box. “Start there.”

We worked side by side in silence. Dean really should’ve been the one doing this job; he could have done it in half the time, as Sam and I were both distracted by particularly interesting titles or just the novelty of such old lore. There was a comfort in this work, though; I felt safe at Bobby’s, felt no pressure from Sam to talk or touch or do anything, really, and in the steadiness of the day I could feel him meld into me, always there as that background humming, physically close enough to feel almost like normal, but not so close as to trigger any alarm bells in my head. It was easy to block out the past, to imagine that this was two years ago, three even, before it was  _ really _ crazy, and we were two people who cared about each other doing a mundane hunter’s task in between normal, run of the mill hunts that had nothing to do with the apocalypse, heaven, or hell.

Our silent, trance-like reverie was interrupted when Dean poked his head in, a grease stain across his forehead. “Hey,” he said. “Food?”

It was close to five. Two hours had passed without a word passed between Sam and me, but I felt closer to him than I had since he’d come back.

“I could eat,” Sam said, arching his back in a barrage of cracks and pops. He held out a hand to pull me from my spot on the floor, and I took it. 

“Always,” I echoed.

We ordered take out from a local Chinese place, and while Dean showered, Sam went to pick it up. 

“So,” Bobby said, as we cleared off the table. “Sam’s back.”

“Yeah?”

“I was just wonderin’ how you were doin’ with all of this.”

His thoughtfulness warmed me. “I’m okay,” I said. “It gets better.”

He nodded, though seemed unconvinced. “Trust your gut, girl,” he said. He thought about it, then added, “Well, I guess that means something a little different with you, doesn’t it?”

I snorted. “Something like that.”

Dean came down then, changed into a fresh shirt and jeans, just as Sam came in the front door laden with brown bags of glorious, glorious food.

“So if the disc is a compass,” I said, spooning rice onto my plate, “what’s it point to? It doesn’t have a needle.”

“It doesn’t have anything,” Sam added. “But the earliest compasses were nothing like what we have now, so it doesn’t necessarily have to.”

“And if it’s some kind of angel compass, then it could be completely different, anyway. Maybe the hole is where something like a needle would go?”

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.”

“You need to figure out what metal that is,” Bobby chimed in. “Could have some properties…”

“It  _ looks _ like hematite—”

“You’re a geologist now, boy?”

Dean suddenly set down his fork. “That’s it,” he announced. “No more hunting talk. Sam’s back. We’re not in any immediate danger. I say we celebrate.”

“Celebrate how?” I asked.

“We’re going out!” he said, rising from his seat. “Come on, get ready. Milo’s is still open down the road, and we haven’t been in years.”

“I’d be up for that,” I said. Sam nodded. I had a sense that he’d been waiting to see what I’d do.

“Aw, hell,” Bobby said. “I might as well come too. Can usually find a poker game on Saturdays.”

“That’s settled then,” Dean said, almost cheering. “Let’s go!”

* * *

The bar was a short half-mile drive up the road from Bobby’s, right on the edge of town. It was one of those local hole-in-the-wall joints reserved for townies, and thus it was rarely crowded, and at any given time you’d know at least two other people there. This point became evident when, moments after walking through the door, Bobby was hailed by a trio of grey-bearded working men sitting at a table in the corner, a stack of poker chips and beers on the table in front of them.

“You kids have fun,” Bobby said, ambling to the table and waving a hand at the bartender, who had already started pouring him a draft. 

“This place hasn’t changed at all,” Dean said, observing the place as we took seats at the bar. The place had a rustic feel: exposed brick and dark, unpolished wood, neon signs, a simple menu. It wasn’t trying to be anything other than what it was. Other than Bobby’s crew, there were only two other patrons, but it was early.

“When’s the last time you guys were here?” 

Dean looked to Sam. “Years?”

Sam nodded. “Not since you joined us, at least.”

Beers in hand, we spent a few moments in contemplative silence, listening to the country rock that played through the bar’s speakers. Dean stood. “Pool? Me and Sam verses Y/N?”

  
“Hilarious,” I said. “Totally fair.” I could play a game of pool, but I was nowhere near the caliber of Sam and Dean, who’d grown up hustling people all their lives. “You and me, Winchester. We’ll see how rusty Sam is.”

“Better idea,” Dean said, grabbing a cue stick and chalking it. “You switch teams every turn, Y/N. Keep it balanced.” 

He tossed a stick to Sam, who caught it and said, “Yeah, that way we’re  _ both  _ handicapped.” I turned and jabbed him with the tip of the cue stick. 

Sam broke, and sunk two solids. I shot and missed on Dean’s turn, and Sam sunk another before Dean could come back and catch up. We were each on our second beer by the time the game ended, with Sam winning easily.

“Who’s rusty now?” He shot Dean a smirk.

“Rematch!” Dean barked. 

“Here, we’ll make it more  _ balanced _ , Dean. I’ll team with Sam, so he has a  _ handicap _ . Might help you out.”

He shot a fake glare in my direction. “You’re on,” he said. 

We played again. This time, Dean took all of his turns, and Sam had to sacrifice every other of his. The competitiveness of those two was sharp and tangible. Dean seemed completely unsettled that Sam had somehow surpassed him, even though I was sure Sam had been hustling the whole year and a half he’d been back, while Dean had probably picked up a pool stick once or twice, if at all, while with Lisa. Sam, though surprised at his own skill ( _ he _ didn’t know he’d been playing all year instead of down in Hell), emitted a smugness that only could come from a sibling who’s finally dethroned his elder brother.

But he didn’t want to give up his hold yet, and I could easily throw off his game. So he muttered suggestions under his breath. He ever so subtly nudged my elbow to shift me into a better position. He stood across the table and traced a trajectory with his eyes, showing me where to shoot. 

But it was more than that, I realized. Even when it wasn’t our turn, when Dean was lining up his shot, he hovered near me. A brush of his shoulder against mine. His hand in the small of my back whenever he passed behind me. It was subtle, and, I thought, unconscious. Though there was warm affection emanating from Sam, his desire to win overpowered everything. More, it felt like he was acting as he used to, as though nothing had changed, and I was surprised to find that I wasn’t uncomfortable, that it felt okay, that, at least, I could pretend at being normal. 

We had one more shot. Sam took it on the 8 ball...and scratched. 

Dean gave a whoop of victory, punching the air. “That’s more like it!” he said. “Universe is back in order.”

“Well I’ll be damned. That you, Winchesters?”

The three of us turned toward the sound of the voice. A pair of men had entered, decked out in workmen’s jeans and Carharts, about the same age as us. Both Sam and Dean grinned as they approached the pool table. “Thrace Hutchins, you son of a bitch,” Dean shook the blond one’s hand, but he was pulled into a half, slap-on-the-back man hug. 

“How’ve you been, Mitch?” Sam said. “We haven’t seen you guys in years.”

“Damn right,” Mitch said. “What happened to you guys?”

Dean shrugged. “Wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he said. “You guys still running the shop?”

Thrace nodded, then gestured to me. “You wanna introduce us to your friend, or let her keep standing there wondering who the hell we are?”

Sam offered an apologetic chuckle. “This is Y/N.Y/N, Mitch and Thrace. We’ve known them since, what, high school?”

“We used to help Bobby out at the salvage yard,” Thrace said. “So we met these two whenever John brought them around.”

“And got them into more trouble…”

“Like that time with Lynn Daniels—” 

I stepped forward and held out my hand to each of them. “Nice to meet you.”

“So you guys wanna play some pool or what?” Mitch said.

“I’m in,” said Sam. Dean grinned.

“I’m out!” I said, hands up in surrender. “I can’t hang with the big dogs.”

“Aw, come on, you can’t be that bad,” Mitch said.

“She’s that bad,” Dean said quickly. Sam and I each shot him a look. “I’m kidding! Well, kinda.”

I laughed. “It’s fine, really. You guys play. I’ll watch.” Sam made a face, looked like he was going to protest, but I shook my head and he fell back.

I ordered another beer and sat on the barstool facing out so I could watch. The four of them fell into a rhythm almost immediately, like they’d done it for years, like they’d never stopped. It was a rare occasion when we ran into friends of Sam and Dean, and each time it surprised me. It unlocked another part of their lives that I didn’t know. Stories of their pasts, of the people in their lives, were so few and far between. It was hard to get out of them. So these encounters….I preferred to sit back and observe, to watch them interact like normal guys: playing pool, drinking beer, in a bar. Teasing and insulting each other relentlessly in that almost gross, over-the-top way men sometimes do. Sam’s head thrown back in laugher. The crow’s feet crinkling Dean’s eyes. The contentment warming both of them and, in turn, me. And Sam, too, stealing glances over at me, meeting my eye each time I caught him, offering a smile, a wink, and it all felt so good I didn’t overthink it, didn’t let any darkness creep in because for the first time in years, I felt okay. 

The bar had grown more busy, the steady lull replaced with the buzz of conversation. The barstools on either side of me soon filled as people took any available seats. My attention wandered from the boys’ pool game to a younger group shooting darts by the door, already a little tipsy, and it occurred to me that it might be a little of a safety hazard, having real darts in a bar. 

“You from here, or just passing through?”

The voice to my right shook me out of my people-watching. I turned and met the chocolate eyes of a man who could’ve easily stepped out of a “Shirtless Farmers of The Midwest” calendar. While built like a laborer—muscles clearly rippled beneath the button-down he wore—he was clean-cut like a businessman. I was automatically suspicious and angled somewhat away from him.

I nodded to the pool table. “Visiting friends.”

He followed my eyes and nodded, then stuck out his hand. “Chase.”

I shook his hand. “Y/N.” I used the brief contact with him to get a better feel for his motives, and was relieved that he wasn’t giving off any outward signs of attraction or romantic interest or—god forbid—undiluted lust. He was pretty content and relaxed, though that didn’t necessarily mean much. “You?”

He shook his head. “Got a contracting job in town. I’m just here a couple of weeks. I live out in Rapid City, actually.” 

Ah. So he was lonely and bored. That could make him friendly, or dangerous. But I didn’t sense danger; no alarm bells were going off in my head. “So you’re displaced and friendless for the time being.”

He laughed. “Basically.” He nodded toward my beer. “What’s on tap?”

“The standard stuff...this is a Heineken. Pretty good.”

“You need another?” 

“Oh, uh, no,” I said quickly. “I’m not—” 

He held his hands up in a “no sweat” gesture, then spun around on the stool and ordered a beer for himself.

“So, how long have you been here?” he asked.

“We just got in town today. You?”

“Just a couple of days so far. This is the first downtime I’ve had, so I thought I’d check out some of the local places. Gets a little boring just sitting in a hotel room.”

I felt, suddenly, a sharp stab of something I hadn’t felt in a long time—jealousy. I looked up and caught Sam staring our direction, a tick going in his jaw. He saw me staring and had a question in his eyes, but Thrace said something to him and he broke away to take his turn.

Sam’s frustration continued to buzz through him, and he watched us the rest of the game. I knew what his concern was, but this Chase character seemed a true country gentlemen, and didn’t make a move, or else didn’t want to.

“So, where’re you from?”

“St. Louis, originally,” I said.

“Never been there, myself.”

“Excuse me.”

Sam was suddenly between us, stretching over the bar to wave down the bartender. He hesitated there just a hair of a second longer than he needed to, then straightened and looked at me, ignoring Chase but posturing in such a way to make it a deliberate dismissal. “Having fun?” he asked, and while his voice was level, friendly, completely normal, his eyes searched mine, and he couldn’t mask the jealousy that was just wafting from him.

“Yeah. You done with pool?” I looked past him where Dean and the others had moved off the table to allow another group to play.

“You can only beat somebody so many times before it gets old,” he joked. The bartender put his beer on the bar, and Sam again reached between us to grab it. Then, as if he’d just noticed Chase, he shifted and held out his hand. “Sam,” he said. 

“Chase.” He shook it. It looked like Sam was squeezing a little harder than was necessary. Chase glanced between the two of us, a look of dawning understanding on his face. “I was just asking Y/N if she knew of anywhere for good live music around here,” he said.

Sam nodded thoughtfully. “You’d have some luck down at The Blue Owl,” he said. “It’s closer to town, more of a nightlife there.”

“Cool, thanks. I appreciate the tip,” Chase said, a polite smile on his face. He took the last swig of his beer and stood. “You folks have a good night! Nice talking to you, Y/N.”

“You too,” I said, and Sam offered his own, “See ya.” 

We watched him walk out of the bar, and Sam claimed his now empty seat and took a long swallow of his beer.

I raised my eyebrows at him. “You didn’t need to do that,” I said gently. “But I mean, damn, that was smooth.”

He chuckled at that, but grew serious. “I’m sorry,” he admitted. “But I couldn’t—”

I rested a hand on his arm and shook my head. “I know,” I said. “It’s okay.” 

He stared at my hand on his arm, a little surprised, and said, “I don’t really have any right to do that now though, do I?”

I reached to feel him, sensing doubt and determination and, deeper, sorrow. “Sam,” I said. “Everything is really fucking shitty right now, but to be completely honest, I’m not interested in a single other person on this planet. I just have shit to deal with.”

That made him smile. “In that case, I’m not sorry.”

“Good,” I said. “Because I liked those vibes you were giving off.”

He leaned in, a wicked smirk on his face. “That so?”

I smirked back, but leaned away. “So,” I said, “You guys know Thrace and Mitch from when you were kids?”

“Yeah. Their dad and Bobby were friends, so they came around and ended up working for him once in awhile. They never left Sioux Falls, obviously. Took over the family business in town.”

“Guess you have that much in common.”

He snorted. “Right.”

“They have any idea what you guys do? About hunting?”

“Not as far as I know. If they’ve ever suspected anything, they’ve never let on.”

“They seem a lot closer to Dean.”

He nodded. “I think the three of them spent more time together when I was at Stanford,” he said with a twinge of regret. “But I’m not sure.”

“No?”

He shook his head. “Nah. I don’t know a lot about those four years.”

“You know, neither do I,” I said. “About you, I mean.”

He shrugged. “You know the important parts. There’s not much else. A lot of studying.”

“Right,” I said. “You lived in California and didn’t have any fun at all. Meanwhile, I partied it up at my Midwestern college like any normal person.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I’m not sure there’s much about either of us that’s  _ normal _ .”

“Speak for yourself,” I teased. 

He laughed. It felt like the beginning, us sitting and talking like two people, attracted to one another, comfortable with one another, drinking together in a bar. We watched Dean and Thrace and Mitch play darts, made observations and speculations about the bar’s other, anonymous patrons. There was warmth and joy bubbling beneath the surface of both of us, where only doubt and fear had lurked before. 

Something was unraveling within me, too. I could block out the entire bar—all of those emotions and moods, even Dean’s—but I couldn’t block out Sam. I could mute him, maybe, but not erase him completely, and he was warm beside me and within me, as if we shared blood running beneath my skin, and the affection, the love I felt from him was strong, undiluted by time or pain or hellfire, even if my mind logically said it should be. 

I watched him laugh, his head thrown back in one of those beautiful, dazzling Sam Winchester smiles, and I felt him, truly. I felt him in my bones. I knew then, completely: this was him. Sam.  _ My _ Sam.  _ Mine _ . The alcohol was liquid courage in my body, not enough to make me rash, or stupid, or unaware, but enough to take the edge of my fear of him, to bury those memories of Sam-with-no-soul. I felt connected to him in ways I hadn’t since long before he’d said  _ yes _ , when we were at our closest, our most inseparable. 

He noticed me staring, my silence. “You okay?” 

I looked around the bar. Bobby was still engaged in a silent, old man’s poker match. Dean was hunched over in uproarious laughter at something Thrace had said. Suddenly the bar felt too crowded for the intimacy I felt between us.

I looked up at him. “You wanna get out of here?”

I caught him by surprise, but he nodded. “Want me to ask Dean for the keys?”

I shook my head. “Bobby’s isn’t far,” I said, still buzzing with him and unwilling to lose the thread of empathy that was suddenly burning between us. “Walk with me?”

He caught Dean’s eye across the bar and gave an almost imperceptible head tilt toward the door. Dean’s eyes went between Sam’s and mine, and then he mouthed “Keys?” Sam shook his head, and Dean shrugged and went back to his conversation, and the two of us stepped out into the winter air. 

We walked the half mile back to Bobby’s. The road was snow-dusted and empty past the bar. The cold was sharp, but to me it was refreshing compared to the stuffy heat of the bar. We walked side by side, hands deep in our pockets and shoulders hunched against the cold, but comfortable in each other’s company.

“This is the first time you’ve volunteered to be alone with me,” Sam said suddenly, hiding his discomfort with a flat chuckle.

“Sorry,” I said, after a minute.

He shook his head. “No! I get it.” We walked a few more feet. “But it’s nice.”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

We reached the house and let ourselves in through the back. I went to the guest room and changed from jeans into a pair of sweatpants before going back to the couch and curling up with a blanket. I turned on the TV and began flipping through the channels.

Sam came back a few minutes later with two steaming mugs. He handed one to me. I cradled it in my hands, savoring the warmth, and pulled it toward my face. I got a whiff of honey and lemon.

“Hot toddy?”

He grinned and sat on the opposite end of the couch. “Cheers.”

I took a drink, throat burning deliciously. He’d made it strong.

“So,” I said. “You’ve been back about a week. How do you feel?”

“Don’t you know that already?”

I smirked.

“I’m good,” he said. “The world’s still here. Everyone I care about is okay…”

“...But?”

He looked at me pointedly, hurt behind his expression. “I miss you,” he admitted, the booze certainly loosening his tongue. 

Being facetious, I pointed at myself and said, “I’m right here.”

His expression didn’t change. “You know what I mean.”

I took a drink, and then a breath. I felt bold, the familiar comfort of Bobby’s, the alcohol in my blood, and the sense of Sam under my skin giving me courage. “Maybe...maybe we can start to fix that.”

He looked surprised. “I don’t want—”

I finished my drink and set it on the coffee table, and scooted down the couch until I was right next to him, our elbows and shoulders touching. I slid my arm under his and took his hand, lacing my fingers between his, and squeezed.

He swallowed. “Okay,” he said.

“Better?”

He laughed. “You’re okay?”

I nodded. “It’s getting easier.”

“Good,” he said, now visibly relaxing. Then, he released my hand and, almost as if trying not to startle me, raised his arm and settled it around my shoulders. We sat there like that, adjusting to each other, trying to remember how we fit together.  “This has to be weirder for you,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

He took a drink and settled further into the cushions. “I mean...for me it feels like it’s been a week since I saw you last, before I said ‘yes.’ But you...you’ve been living your life without me for over a year. Nothing’s changed for me.Everything has for you.”

I thought about that a minute. “But you have more of an adjustment to make,” I said. “Because like you said, we’re on different timelines. You’re back from the dead dealing with a year and a half of catch up, and I’m completely different.”

“Not completely,” he said, a glint in his eye. “You still suck at pool.”

“Hey now.”

He laughed. “Honestly, though, I’m a little surprised you hadn’t moved on.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Really? You thought I could, just like that?”

“It’s not like you thought I was coming back.”

“Bet you’re glad I didn’t.” I wiggled my eyebrows at him.

He looked sheepish. “There wasn’t anyone else, at all?” I couldn’t tell if he was just curious, amazed, or clarifying for his own sanity.

I thought of Roberto, seeming so far away and long ago. “Almost,” I admitted. “But, no.”

He tightened his arm around me. I thought he felt relieved. “You’re right, though. I’ve got a lot of time to make up for. And I don’t even know where to start.”

“Well,” I said, turning so I could better see his face. “Let me tell you about the Poltergeist I lived with in Costa Rica.”

We talked a long time, Sam clinging to my every word. He was fascinated about the hunting community in Costa Rica, and he speculated about anything and everything, asking me more questions than I could possibly answer. But he wanted to know more than the job; he wanted the smallest details, as if he was trying to drink in that time apart, to fill it with something else, to know I’d been okay, to recommit me to memory. I was happy to oblige; I hadn’t had a willing audience to share that experience with, and sharing it with Sam began to further unwind that tightness inside me, that knot of pain and fear I’d carried since that May he’d left me.

But I felt myself growing tired, my sentences dangling into silence, and so warm against Sam, feeling, for the first time in a long time, truly safe, I drifted off. 

* * *

I woke up screaming.

Feeling constricted, I thrashed and pushed, launching myself away from Sam and the couch. He stood after me, reached for me, my name on his lips a gentle crooning, but I threw his hand off of me and flinched away from him and he drew back, startled and hurt and scared. I left the room, made for the bathroom and stood blinking in the bright light, staring at my pallid, sweating reflection in the mirror, tears pooling in my eyes, and it was all I could do not to scream in frustration. I gripped either side of the sink, squeezed my eyes shut, forcing tears down my cheeks and willed myself to stop, to get a grip, to breathe. 

I turned on the faucet and splashed cold water on my face, cupped my hands and took a few sips, then bent over and leaned my forehead on the mirror. 

_ If I could stave off the nightmares, I’d be alright _ , I thought.  _ Awake, with him, it’s getting better, but not if I keep going backwards every time I sleep. _

I took a deep breath and turned off the light and stepped back into the hallway. Then, instead of walking back to the living room, I turned the corner and went upstairs and into the guest room, closing the door behind me. I couldn’t have slept long, because if Bobby or Dean had been back, they surely would’ve come running.

I was suddenly painfully exhausted. I sank onto the bed, leaned forward over my knees and placed my head in my hands. The tears had started again, a slow leaking, and my eyes burned, my heart was still racing, and I felt generally sick to my stomach. 

I heard footsteps on the stairs, the floor creaking as Sam stopped outside the door. “Y/N,” he said. “Please.”

And there we were. In my mind, I saw the monster who’d hurt me, who’d betrayed me, who’d tormented me. Behind the door, only feet away, was the man I loved, the man who had sacrificed everything to save the world. And we stood and sat there, on each side of the door, desperate and afraid.

“Let me help you,” he pleaded, and I could feel him, feel his love, and I wanted him, I craved the safety he could emit, the protection from a projection of himself. I closed my eyes, recalled the bar, the way he’d felt when he’d come between Chase and me, how he’d felt as we’d talked and laughed, the warmth sitting on the couch. 

I heard the door open and close, and then he was kneeling in front of me, his hands on my knees. I blinked and looked at him; our eyes were almost level from this position. 

“It was me, wasn’t it? Hurting you?”

My eyes flicked away. Because what could I tell him? Surely not the truth.

He reached for me, tentative. His hand brushed against my cheek and held me there a moment. His eyes were soft, broken, but his jaw tensed, and there was anger there, roiling beneath his calm exterior. 

“I would never hurt you,” he breathed. “I would rather die.”

I sighed, my eyes falling closed again, and I leaned forward so our foreheads were touching. With my eyes closed, I could focus on his voice, on his touch, so different than how they’d been before… “I know,” I said. “Awake, I know that you’re not him, but every since New Jersey I can’t sleep without seeing you like that.”

He tensed under me. I sensed his confusion. “New Jersey?” he asked. “What happened in New Jersey?”

My heart stuttered. I grasped in desperation for a correction. “Detroit,” I said. “I meant Detroit. When you said ‘yes’, Sam, that was it. Everything went away. And then things you—Lucifer—did, I can’t…”

“Ssshhh. It’s okay.” I wasn’t sure I’d convinced him, but at least he was preoccupied with me. He brushed my hair back, took my hands in his and squeezed. “What can I do? How do I help you?”

“I don’t know,” I breathed, but even as I said it, I squeezed his hands back and felt more comfort in his touch, and calmed further. His physical presence was strong, but the touch, the feel of him, elevated the emotions I read from him. They’d been so absent when he was Lucifer, absent still when he had no soul. Now, they were so tangible in his touch, and I began to feel again that warmth I’d felt earlier, when we were connected, truly, without fear, for the first time in years. 

I squeezed again, took one hand and placed it on his shoulder, scooted farther forward on the bed so I was bracketed by his arms. I wanted to be close to him, wanted to melt into him, into that safety. I sensed, beneath his concern, beneath his regret and sorrow, solid and strong, an absolute and complete aura of protectiveness, almost a concrete shield surrounding me. It was something I hadn’t felt in so long, that primitive side of him, the feeling that I always believed was the core of Sam: a heart, though beaten, though damaged, that would fight and defend to the end, and it was burning there, like coals, for me.

I wanted to bury myself in it. My heart quickened, again, and a surge of desperation pulsed through me. I pushed forward, turned my head, and found Sam’s lips. 

Shocked, he pulled away. “I don’t understand,” he said.

“I need you,” I said. “I need to feel you.” I pushed forward again, but he leaned back again, holding me almost at arm’s length.

“Five minutes ago you were  _ terrified  _ of me.”

I nodded. “I’m terrified of who you  _ were _ ,” I said. “I can feel you, Sam, that’s what’s keeping me here right now; you look the same but you  _ feel  _ real and good, and the closer I am to you the easier it’s getting, the more you touch me, the more we breathe the same air...please, Sam.”

He didn’t understand, not fully, but there was love in his eyes, and lust, and when I leaned in again he didn’t pull away but met me there, his lips seeking mine tentatively, brushing against mine slowly, gently.

My chest began to lose some of its tightness. Like this, he couldn’t be anyone but Sam, whole and good. We kissed, me perched on the edge of the guest room bed, Sam kneeling between my knees, and I knew nothing other than his lips, the strength I was drawing from this closeness, and the comfort of his proximity.

He shifted, pulling back again, eyes questioning. I took his hand and slid back onto the bed, guiding him to me and he followed. Sliding an arm around me and leaning against the headboard, he pushed my hair out of my face. 

“Better?” he asked, his voice hushed. 

“I know it’s crazy, but it’s helping. I can’t explain it.”

He smiled. “I think it would help anybody, empath or not.”

“That’s true.”

“But if it’s helping,” he said, a glint in his eyes, “Maybe we shouldn’t stop.”

I laughed and turned into him, seeking his lips again, and he leaned down and met me, this time running his tongue along my lip and I opened for him, returning the favor, and felt another surge of love and safety as we continued to kiss, even as new warmth began to build between us.

He kept his right arm wrapped tightly around me, holding me to him, and his left trailed up and down my arm, fingertips making light, invisible trails against my skin. I took it in mine, not thinking only reacting, and placed in on my breast, squeezing myself through his hand. He responded with a squeeze of his own, kneading it, sliding his hand down my ribs to my hip and back up. I mirrored him, my hands moving from his head to his arms to his chest, just wanting to touch as much of him as I could, to absorb him through my fingertips, to deepen this connection between us until it was as blazing as it had once been. I slipped my fingers beneath his shirt, spanning the expanse or his torso: the soft skin of his stomach, the rigid lines of his chest. 

He sighed and his lips moved to my neck, then, a breathy moan spilling from my lips as he licked and sucked beneath my jawline, his hand sliding under my shirt, pushing my bra out of the way, and I knew then I needed him fully, needed all of him if I would ever hope to begin to heal from all that had happened. 

I straightened, just barely making space between us, and pulled my shirt over my head, then unhooked my bra and let it fall onto the floor after it. Then I was kissing Sam again, my fingers working the buttons of his flannel, his on his belt, and then we were both shucking off our pants, and before I could lose my nerve I had thrown one leg over his hips and sat straddling his naked lap.

His eyes were wide, lust-blown, breath heavy like mine, but he paused, brushing his hand down my face, my chest, my stomach, to rest against my hip. Arousal emanated from him: need was evident through his emotions and the hardness that pressed between us. He exhaled a long, slow breath. “How long has it been?”

It wasn’t really a lie when I said, “You were the last.”

A heavy moan, almost a growl, rolled from deep in his throat. He captured my mouth with a hunger and slid a hand between us, his thumb dipping down to touch me, to give me what I needed. I gasped at his touch, pushing into his hand and then raising up, desperate now for more of him, for  _ all _ of him. I couldn’t wait; I was too in tune with him, too sensitive to every physical and emotional sensation. I pulled away from his lips and batted his hand away and reached between us, lined him up and lowered myself onto him slowly with a raspy sigh of relief. I felt surrounded by him, Sam who was not just alive but whole, whose love and pleasure I could feel the same as mine. 

We sat there a moment, chests heaving, my hands splayed against his shoulders. He ran his fingers up and down my ribs, eyes lust-darkened, all of him wound-tight but unmoving. Waiting.

It was so rare to see him like this. Sam almost always took control in the bedroom, was a powerful tempest, loving and giving but aggressive and desperate. When we’d fucked in New Jersey, I’d taken his roughness then as characteristic, devoid of affection though it had been. But now he must’ve sensed my need for control, and he held back, his fingers gently massaging my hips, eyes locked onto mine. 

“I’ve got you,” he breathed. 

I rolled my hips in reply and his head fell back, his fingers gripping my hips more tightly. I leaned forward to kiss him again as I rocked against him.  Slowly, slightly, he pushed back, thrusting up to meet me in long, steady strokes, one arm snaking around my back to hold me against him. 

It was slow, but desperate; Sam took me with a hunger that said everything about how he’d longed for me even in such a short time. He reached between us, kissing me deeply as he pressed and rubbed until I clutched around him, shaking and shouting, and he continued, even longer, rolling my breasts beneath his hands, guiding my hips, thrusting up to hit the deepest parts of me, holding me impossibly close, until finally he stuttered, rising up and coming down, and I was clutched against his chest, my forehead against his shoulder, high off of him, feeling as though our hearts were beating in the same body, completely enveloped by his affection, his love, his desire, his joy.

“I love you.” He pressed a kiss against my neck. “I love you so damn much.”

And then, for the first time since he’d come back, in fact, probably for the first time since he’d died, I could breathe. And after I’d inhaled that first delicious, life-giving breath, I exhaled on a sob, and held there in his arms, enveloped by him, surrounded by him, united with him, I surrendered at last to the grief I had held in for so long. I cried. Tears flowed and ran and raced in rivers, my body shaking with uncontained sobs. I howled, I clung to him, I drenched him in tears as I mourned him and celebrated him, sorrow and anguish and joy and relief all spilling from me so completely I thought I would become dust. And as I ultimately calmed, my sobs settling into small hiccups, my grip on him relaxing from exhaustion, muscles spent and trembling, eyes drying and red, I lay with my ear pressed to his heart and whispered, over and over, like a prayer spilling from my lips,  _ “You’re alive, you’re alive, you’re alive.” _

If he spoke at all during this, his words never registered. Instead, I was powerfully sensitive to his touch: the strength in his arms as he held me, the warmth of his breath puffing against my hair, the softness of his lips against my brow, the steadiness of his hands massaging my back, stroking my hair, rubbing my arms, and his overall, impenetrable, undeniable solidness that pressed against me: a shield, a fortress, a stronghold. 

I slept soundly that night, too physically and emotionally drained to pass back into the darker parts of memory. Whether Sam’s presence provided comfort, I couldn’t say, but I didn’t wake until late the following morning.

* * *

Sam remained  with her, unmoving, for a long time. He wasn’t tired, although he felt he should be. He was physically satiated, emotionally wrung-out, and worried. He’d never seen her like this, so desperately mournful, and while he should be happy and romantic and warm, something was itching at the back of his mind, some detail he felt he should know or remember that would clue him in to her behavior since he’d come back, but it evaded him and he was frustrated. 

He looked down at her, asleep, tucked against him, her face against his chest, tear streaks dried and shiny on her face, and felt a surge of anger at whoever had hurt her and terror that it had been him, even him as Lucifer. He felt a primal urge to protect her at all costs, even though he rationally knew that she was completely capable of protecting herself, strong and smart and quick as she was.

He held her, listening to her breathe, trying to quiet his mind and sleep, until he heard the door open and close downstairs and two sets of footsteps across the entryway. Then, and only when he was sure she was deeply asleep, her eyes unmoving beneath her eyelids, did Sam press a kiss to her temple, untangle himself from her, put on his clothes and leave the room.

He passed Bobby in the upstairs hallway on his way to his own room. He said nothing other than a grunted “G’night” and patted Sam on the chest before closing his door. Downstairs, Sam found Dean bent over in front of the open fridge. He straightened with a box of leftover Chinese, then noticed Sam in the doorway.

Dean considered his brother for a few seconds, raised his eyebrows, said, “Huh. Good for you two,” and then turned back to the counter, where he found a clean plate and began spooning Lo Mein onto it. He popped it in the microwave.

“Dean,” Sam said, and there was something in his tone, in the timbre of his pitch, that gave Dean pause. A line of tension formed between his shoulder blades. He turned back toward his brother.

“What happened?” Sam asked. He looked broken. He looked scared.

Dean swallowed. “Lucifer happened. It rocked her, man, I told you.”

Sam shook his head. He couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more, that he’d missed something, that there was a block in his memory. “There’s something else,” he said. “You’re not telling me the whole story.” 

Dean was 100% positive Sam didn’t know a damn thing. He was 100% positive he could write this off as Sam being Sam, being paranoid and worried and angsty. He was 100% glad Sam wasn’t the empath, because despite being 100% sure of all of that, Dean was suddenly terrified.

“Was there...did something happen in New Jersey?”

Dean’s heart skipped three beats, stopped completely, and then began sprinting. He felt suddenly positive he was about to puke. Had he let something slip? Had Y/N? But she wouldn’t—

The microwave dinged, and Dean used it as an excuse to look away, to try to compose himself, to try to compose a believable lie.

“Lucifer hurt her,” he said, praying Sam would read the tightness in his voice as authentic pain for the lie, not something else. “She went after you when I was too fucked up to stop her, and I guess Lucifer decided to...have some fun.” He felt sick, not sure how much he should— _could_ —invent, opted to stay closer to the truth. “He wasn’t physical; it was all in her head. I don’t even know the details. He scared her, and he did it wearing your face, looking and sounding and probably smelling like you...and then at Stull Cemetery he killed her.”

Dean’s hands were shaking. He was either really good at fooling himself, more drunk than he thought he was, or more fucked up that he realized. He couldn’t turn around and face his brother.

“I’ve never seen her like I did tonight,” Sam said, his voice sounding far-away. “Like she’d just realized I’d been gone and come back, like she hadn’t grieved.”

Dean felt a tear brim in his eye, and he ducked his head into his shoulder to stop it. He was churning inside, every memory of those last days climbing back into his consciousness and he knew he  _ wasn’t _ drunk enough for this, but now it hurt, and now it wouldn’t stop.

He finally turned around. Sam’s eyes were wet, but he wasn’t crying. Sam was never a graceful crier; if the dam broke, he’d be red-faced in seconds. “We didn’t get to say our goodbyes, Sammy. You saved the goddamn world, but it cost all of us more than we had, and we were too fucked up to appreciate it.”

Sam’s face crumpled, and he strode across the kitchen and slammed Dean into a bearhug, and as Dean clasped him back, he wondered how the truth had bled so profusely out of that lie, how he’d tricked himself—or maybe been tricked—into an all-out chick flick marathon. “It’s okay, Sammy. We’re okay. Hey— _ knock it off _ !” Sam gave a half sob, half chuckle, and stepped away. 

Dean blinked furiously and stared up at the the ceiling. “I almost drank myself to death,” he said. “Y/N and I almost ripped each other apart before we got it together. But that’s not your fault, okay? None of it ever has been your fault. You know that, right?”

Sam swallowed, blinked, sniffed, and nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I know.”

Dean relaxed slightly. “We good?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Okay,” Dean said. “Go get back to your woman.”

Sam sighed. He wiped an arm across his eyes and left the kitchen, went back upstairs, took off his jeans, and quietly slipped back into bed beside Y/N. She stirred but didn’t wake up, only curled closer to him, and Sam smiled. Something still tugged on his mind, something that wasn’t sitting right, but he didn’t think he’d ever get it back, get all of his questions answered, unless he could somehow unlock the part of his memory that had been entwined with Lucifer’s. Maybe he’d left that part of him in the Cage. Maybe years of torment in Hell had created more fissures and gaps than could be repaired. 

He couldn’t worry about it. He had his brother. He had his girl. It would be fine. It would be fine. It would be fine.

After Sam left the kitchen, Dean poured himself a double shot of whiskey, tossed it back, and then dumped his Lo Mein into the garbage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a head's up: My life's about to get reeeaaal busy. Know that I will not abandon this, but it might be slow-going for the next several weeks. My goal is to finish it by August...but I can't promise anything.
> 
> Thanks for all the feedback and for sticking with me. Your comments motivate me to keep at it!


	25. Chapter 25

 

Sam had always been a light sleeper. So when Y/N stirred beside him the following morning, he woke up, too.

He heard her gasp, the sudden increase in speed of her breathing, and felt the frenzied shifting in the sheets as she tried to move away, and he opened his eyes. Hers were wide and fearful, and it took him only a fraction of a second to realize she wasn’t fully awake, still halfway unconscious and unaware of who he was. She arched her back, twisting away from him.

He moved slowly, rolling fully onto his left side toward her, sliding his right arm around her waist and pulling her flush against him, back to front, and he buried his face into the nape of her neck.

“It’s me, baby,” he breathed, his arm coming up to lay across her torso, holding her firmly against him. He could feel her heart beneath his forearm as her hands came up to try to push him away. “It’s _me_ ,” he repeated, giving her what he hoped was a reassuring squeeze. “ _Feel_ me.”

It only took a moment for her to fully awaken. She stopped straining, muscles relaxing as she let out a long sigh. Instead of pushing against his arm, she hugged it to her and let out a nervous chuckle. “Sorry.”  
  
He kissed her shoulder. “Don’t be.”

She rolled over so they were face-to-face and blinked blearily in the sunlight pouring in between the blinds. Her eyes were red and swollen, evidence of the emotional night before, but she was warm and soft with sleep, her hair splayed out around her head, a crease on her face from the pillow. Sam realized with a sharp intake of breath that he hadn’t expected to ever see her like this again. That morning they’d woken up in Detroit had been the last time; he’d counted it as the last time then, and something clenched painfully in his chest.

She must’ve sensed it; her brows creased. “You okay?” she croaked, raising a hand to his face.

He nodded. “You?”

“I’m good,” she said, and leaned in and kissed him.

They kissed languidly for several minutes until she finally pulled back and said, “I used to dream about this.”

“What, my morning breath?”

She pushed his arm playfully. “Just being here with you. When you were gone...it wasn’t always nightmares.” She paused, fingers trailing across his chest, momentarily deep in thought. “Sometimes that was worse.”

He could understand that. He remembered those sweet dream visions of Jess that rose from the ashes of his nightmares to torment him, the ache that settled in his chest in the morning.

“I’m here now,” he promised, and pulled her closer to him.

She hummed as she nestled into him. “Think we can just stay here all day?”

“I don’t see why not.”

She smirked, a glint in her eye he hadn’t seen in so long, and reached for him. He was hard instantly, and he claimed her lips and rolled on top of her. She was shifting to give him room when there was a loud knock on the door.

“Hey, get up,” Dean barked from the hallway. “Cas is here.”

Sam groaned, his head flopping onto her shoulder, but Y/N laughed. “ _T_ _hat’s_ why not,” she sighed.

* * *

Dean and Bobby were both seated in the kitchen nursing strong cups of coffee. Bobby had clearly been up and working already—there was a fresh grease stain on his shirt. Dean, on the other hand, looked like he’d been yanked out of the world’s greatest dream and straight into a business meeting. Which, in a sense, he had. Castiel stood at the other end of the kitchen, an expectant expression on his face. He leveled a steady gaze at us when we entered. “Y/N...Sam. I’m glad you’ve gotten...reacquainted.”

Sam cleared his throat. “So, coffee?” I said, quickly crossing to the pot and pouring each of us a cup.

Dean rubbed his eyes and yawned. “Y/N, you got the compass?”

I fished the chain from beneath my shirt and passed it to Castiel. He studied it, a look of surprise taking over his features. “You found this in a cellar?”

“Back in Kansas, yeah,” Sam said. I handed him a mug and we both sat down. “What is it?”

“ _‘_ _On the east three gates; on the north three gates; on the south three gates; and on the west three gates' ,"_ he recited. “Abram’s Compass. This will help you immensely.”

“You wanna tell us how it works?” Bobby grunted.

“It was originally given to Abram by God to guide him on his journey. It guides whoever possesses it to what they’re seeking.”

“So why hasn’t it done anything yet?” I asked.

“It’s missing a piece,” he said, and there was a collective groan from the four of us. “But I can find it.” He handed the compass back to me. “This shouldn’t take long. Until then, stay here.”

“Wait, Cas—” I started, but he vanished.

“Well, that was pointless,” Dean grumbled. He pushed his chair back and stood. “I’m gonna call Lisa, give her an update.” A few minutes later, we heard him talking out on the porch.

“What’s his deal?” Sam asked, looking up at Bobby.

Bobby rolled his eyes. “Hangover, if I had to guess. Lightweight.” He rubbed his hands on his jeans. “Well, who knows when feathers’ll be back. You two want a job?”

“Not really,” we said in unison.

“Aw, screw you lovebirds. I’ll handle it myself, then.”

Sam leaned back in his chair. “What is it?”

“Got a call about a couple o’ ghouls down near Omaha. Of course, nobody else is around, ‘cept you all. And you’ve got bigger fish to deal with.”

“We could—”

He waved his hands on his way out of the kitchen. “Naw. You need to be ready when Cas gets back. And ready for whatever comes after that.” He tramped out of the kitchen, leaving us alone.

I took a drink and closed my eyes, savoring the moment of quiet. I felt Sam’s hand cover mine on the table, sensed his joy in being able to do so again. “You okay?”

I opened my eyes. “Yeah. Just...ready for this to be over with.”

He nodded. “Then what?”

“What do you mean, _‘then what_ ’?”

He shrugged and watched his thumb rub circles into my hand. “What’s after this job? We get the Horn back, put everything right and...what? Go back to what we’ve always done?”

“No! We—” but I realized I didn’t know how to finish that sentence. “I hadn’t thought about it. I’ve just been trying to get through each day.”

He met my eyes. “Maybe this is it.”

“What like... _it_ it? The end?”

He shifted so his entire body was facing mine, his knees knocking into my thigh. “Remember when we met, when I told you I thought we could have something real, something without hunting, after Dean and I killed the demon?”

I nodded. It had been so long ago, back when we’d been new and young and hopeful. “You did say that. And then—”

“Right,” he said. “And then everything got worse. But maybe, I dunno, maybe this is a second chance.”

The spark of hope blooming in him was contagious. I squeezed his hand. “Maybe you’re right.”

“Dean’s done, right?” he said. “He’s back to Lisa and Ben when this is finished. So—

“So why can’t we have that same, yeah,” I said, nodding. “Yeah, maybe you’re right.”

He grinned, grabbed me around the waist, pulled me onto his lap, and kissed me.  “I’m definitely right.”

I laughed, delighted in his embrace, and threw my arms around his neck. I pressed our foreheads together. “One last job.”

He kissed me again. “One last job.”

We had nothing to do that day: no research, no projects, no job. When Dean came back inside, much cheerier than before, he teased us for our affection but couldn’t hide his evident relief. Bobby gone on a hunt, we spent the entire day folded into blankets on the couch, watching terrible-but-awesome action movies, cracking jokes and eating pizza. It was a snapshot of normalcy, a typical American family spending a typical American winter Saturday being as lazy as possible.

I stayed close to Sam. There were moments when a memory would snag me and jolt me back to the warehouse, but they were mostly kept at bay by his touch—my hand on his thigh, our shoulders touching, his arm tucking me against his side. My mind wanted to play tricks; I needed to constantly reassure myself that he was here and that he was really, truly him. And he understood that, too, going out of his way to reach out to me, to take my hand, to brush my hair back, to offer those small physical reminders throughout the day.

When evening came, Thrace called to invite the three of us out again. Dean leapt at the opportunity, but Sam and I declined. Now alone, Sam took my hand and pulled me upstairs, laid me on the bed, and showed me just how much time we had to make up for.

It was a long while before we slept. We drank in as much of each other as we could take, and when we were sated, we held each other and filled the stillness with promises and memories, hopes and plans.

It was—for the briefest of moments, just a blip on our timeline—how it should be.

We should have known it wouldn’t last.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry it's so short and lacking in substance! It was either end it here and get it posted, or write the next chunk, make it really long, and not post for another few weeks. I was motivated by your comments and wanted to give you something to hold you over until I get more time to write. 
> 
> Thanks for the love!


	26. Chapter 26

“How’d you sleep? Any nightmares?”

We were still curled up in bed an hour after waking up. We had nothing to motivate us to leave: no monsters, no research, no danger, nothing to incite enough panic to move us. I had a glimpse, in that moment, of what normal life might be, how it might feel to wake up like this every day, maybe with nothing more than a routine alarm clock set for a routine job to stir us. 

“A little. They started once or twice. I think I could sense you here, and that kept them out.”

Sam kissed my forehead. “Good. Let’s keep it that way.” He sat up and stretched, looked at the clock on the nightstand and did a double-take. “It’s almost 10:30.” He got out of bed—eliciting a groan of disapproval from me—and grabbed his duffel bag. 

“Well, you kept us up late.”

He quirked an eyebrow. “I don’t remember you complaining.”

I burrowed into the blankets. “Come back to bed.”

He bent over and kissed me, but pulled away just as I reached for him. “Or,” he said with a smirk, “you could join me in the shower.”

I grinned. 

In the shower, Sam pressed me against the cool tile and hooked my legs around his hips. His lips made heated trails across my jawline and neck as he moved in me, water running in rivulets from his hair and down his shoulders. I loved him like this, muscles bulging and lips curled as he surged forward to bring us both release, always completely in control despite the wild in his eyes. 

A few more strokes, a few swipes of his thumb across my center and I was shaking apart, and then, even through the complete bliss of him, I was suddenly overcome with absolute dread. I clung to him, my arms vice-like, my face in his neck as he finished with a groan.

Sam pulled out and set me down, then kissed me before moving me beneath the spray and rubbing shampoo between his fingers. I closed my eyes and dared to hope that this could last. But hope, that desperate, flighty seductress, rose like steam to dissipate into nothing. Sam’s fingers massaged soap across my shoulders, my breasts, my thighs, until the water turned too cold to bear. Then, wrapped in a towel, I watched the last of the suds swirl into the drain and wondered just how much time we had left.

* * *

When we finally emerged downstairs, Dean was nowhere to be found. Sam peeked out the front window, but the Impala was missing, too.

“That’s weird,” I said. 

Sam shrugged. “It’s Dean. He probably went home with some—oh.” A look of dawning realization crossed his features.

“Yeah. He’s not really shacking up with anyone since Lisa.”

He checked his phone. “He didn’t call.”

“Would he have?”

“I dunno. I guess not if he was drunk.” He glanced at the clock, then back out at the yard. Then he picked up his phone and called his brother. I stood watching him, hearing the faint ringback from across the room, then Dean’s voice briefly until Sam hung up.

“Voicemail?”  
  
He nodded.

“You’re worried.”

He chewed his lip. “A little. It’s not like he  _ wouldn’t _ do something like this, but—”

I placed a hand on his arm. “I know. Let’s eat something, see if he calls or turns up, and try again.”

He nodded. 

But we hadn’t heard from him in an hour, and then it was past noon, and Sam and I were both getting anxious. When Dean hadn’t answered on the fifth phone call, Sam scrolled through his contacts until he found Mitch’s number. I sat close to him so I could listen. 

Mitch picked up on the fourth ring. “Hey, Sam! We missed you last night. How’s it going?”

“I’m good, Mitch. Hey—you don’t know where Dean is, do you? He never showed up.”

“Oh yeah, he’s here. It got a little crowded so we came back here and he passed out on the couch. You wanna talk to him?”

Sam rolled his eyes, but his shoulders relaxed. “Yeah, sure.”

There was brief shuffling, then Dean’s voice, “Hey, Sammy.”

I tensed. Sam cocked his head at me. “Dean, what the hell?”  
  
“What? I have to check in with you every five minutes? I figured you and Y/N’d want the alone time.” 

There was something about hearing his voice that opened up the empathy channels. My heart was suddenly pounding. I grabbed Sam’s knee.

He placed his hand on mine, brows furrowed in concern as he kept talking. “A text would’ve been nice, especially with everything—”

“Look, Sam, by the time I realized I wasn’t coming home, I was so drunk I was halfway to funkytown. It wasn’t exactly on the front of my mind. I’ll head home later today, alright? You and Y/N just...you know.” He chuckled. “Use protection!”

The moment Dean dropped  _ funkytown, _ Sam’s entire demeanor changed. He went from slumped on the couch to straight-backed and rigid in an instant. Somehow, he kept his voice laced with the same irritation as before. “Fine. I’ll see you later.” He hung up and tossed the phone onto the table. “He’s in trouble.”

“Yeah, got that.”

He ran a hand through his hair. “Okay. So…” He looked at me. “When we met Thrace and Mitch the other night, did you notice anything off?”  
  
I thought about it, then shook my head. “No. They felt normal. Human.”

He stood up and began pacing. “So between then and last night, something got to them.”

“Demons?”

“Has to be. But why? Does this have to do with the Horn?”

“Yeah, probably. They know we’re after it, and they also know we’re...kind of important pieces.”

He stopped in his tracks and looked at me sharply. “Dean’s bait.”

Mouth dry, I nodded. 

“Okay. What we don’t want is to walk into a trap.” He strode across the room to Bobby’s desk and began rummaging around in the drawers until he pulled out an old, leather bound address book and began flipping through it. He stopped on a page and ran his finger down it.  “Good. Thrace and Mitch are still at the same address.”

“Assuming they’re actually there.”

“I’m willing to bet they are. It’s set off from town, kind of like this place, and it has a decent-sized basement where they’re probably keeping him.”

And just like that, the honeymoon was over. We were no longer lovers; we were back in the trenches, two hunters planning a rescue mission that I knew in my bones would reset everything. I didn’t know who was possessing Thrace and Mitch, but I knew they were tied to New Jersey. I could already see the curtain, the one Dean and I had so carefully arranged, pulling back. We would all make it out of this alive, I was sure, but what came after, what that meant for Sam, for me, for all of us...I didn’t know.

“Y/N? You okay?”

I swallowed. If I came clean now, what would happen? “I just…” Confession burned on the tip of my tongue. I choked it back in favor of a different truth. “I have a  _ bad _ feeling about this.”

He placed his hand on my shoulder. “We’ve dealt with worse.”

“Sam, I’m  _ never _ wrong.” And I wasn’t, and he knew it. Every instance of my empathy rearing its head to warn me of some impending disaster had come true: Lilith. Lucifer. Everything in between.

“Look,” he said, sounding unsure. “Maybe you should stay here.”

I pushed his hand away and took a step back. “What? Are you crazy?” 

“They’re after you because you’re an empath, right? You’ll be safe here, down in the panic room.”

He’d mistaken my hesitation for fear of my own life and limb, fear of demons, fear of the hunt. He didn’t know I was terrified of losing him again, and this was so similar to the conversation I’d had with Dean before we’d rescued Sam that I felt a chill run down my spine. 

“No. I’m not worried about me, just…” I chewed my lip, searching for the right words. “They probably know we’re coming. And these aren’t just average Joe demons, either. Dean and I dealt with them once before you came back. They’re coordinated, Sam. We have to be careful.”

“So we’ll be careful.” He swept down and kissed me, hard, on the lips, as if he were sealing a promise, and I knew I was going to lose him. Call it a gut feeling, call it an empathic intuition, but I knew: after this, what we’d had the past thirty-six hours would shatter. So I kissed him back. I savored it. I held on.

When he broke away, he had the cold steel of unflinching determination in his eyes. Maybe for anything else, he’d have trusted my instincts and abandoned this case. But not when Dean was the one on the other end. “Come on. Let’s figure out a plan.”

* * *

Thrace and Mitch didn’t live far. After spending the day planning and preparing, Sam and I took one of Bobby’s working cars and drove to the other side of town. Just on the edge, standing a mile from most of the other businesses, we passed an auto shop bearing the sign: _Hutchins Auto: If You Can’t Do It Yourself, You’re Stuck With Us!_  and a CLOSED sign on the front door. 

“That’s their shop,” Sam said. “The house is that grey one next door.”

“The Impala isn’t here.”

“Must be at the bar, then.”

He turned the corner and parked on the street behind the house. “Okay. Here we go. You got everything?”

I unbuckled my seatbelt and patted the backpack on my lap. We each had the usual hunter’s fare, and Sam had the demon-killing knife in case he ran into trouble. I was playing the stealth game, so the plan was to get in and out before anyone even knew I was there. 

I took out my phone and a pair of earbuds. “Ready?”

I called him as he nodded. He answered, then slid his phone into his coat pocket as I muted mine, plugged in the earbuds, and put it in my own pocket.

“I’ll see you soon,” he said.

Seized with a sudden stab of fear, I leaned over the seat, pulled his face to mine, and kissed him. “No matter what happens in there, Sam, I love you.” 

He cupped my chin, concerned. “We’re gonna be fine, Y/N.”

He certainly believed it. I slid back over and opened the door. He grabbed my hand.

“Be careful,” he said, giving it a squeeze. “I love you.”

I got out of the car, put the backpack on, and crossed the street. It was just past sunset and dark out on the edge of town, where there weren’t a lot of porch or street lights. That was good. I reached the backyard and stopped behind an old, leaning wooden fence, looking toward the house for any sign of movement. The windows had curtains drawn, but there were lights on inside. 

I heard Sam pull away behind me to circle to the front, and I moved quickly to the back of the house, crouching down against the siding when I reached it and wedging myself behind the A/C unit as best as I could. A few feet away was a basement window, caked with dirt and cobwebs. 

I put one of the headphones in my ear and waited. 

On the other end, I heard nothing but the faint rustling of background noise. A few seconds later, Sam’s voice came muffled through the phone:  _ “Alright. I’m heading in.” _

A jingle of keys, the slam of the door, then more rustling. I reached into the backpack and pulled out Sam’s lockpick just as I heard him knocking. A few moments later, a man’s voice said,  _ “Sam! Didn’t expect you! Come on in!” _

That was my cue. 

I darted over to the window and peered in. There was a dim light on to the right, but as far as I could tell, the room was empty.  I slid the lockpick into the top of the window, tripped the latch, and then slowly pushed the window in, listening to the conversation on Sam’s end of the line for any crucial information.

I stuck my head in first. It was a typical, concrete-poured basement set up the way I’d expect for a pair of bachelors. Immediately below me was a sectional couch, facing a TV in the left corner. The stairs were directly across the room. The light was coming from above a wet bar set up against the right wall. On the opposite side of the bar from me, a figure slumped against a support beam.

“Psst...Dean?”

The slumped figured made an enthusiastic grunt and shifted. I took that as a good sign. Pulling my head back out, I rolled onto my stomach and slowly lowered myself feet-first through the window and dropped onto the couch. 

I paused and listened. Around me was silence. Through the earbud I could hear Sam and two other voices talking. Someone laughed, and I heard it through the phone as well as muffled from upstairs.

I looked to the right. Dean was handcuffed around a metal beam near the bar. “Hold on,” I mouthed, and passed him on my way to the foot of the stairs. The door at the top was closed. I took off the backpack, opened it, and pulled out a large painting dropcloth. Unfolding it carefully, I placed it face-down at the foot of the stairs, smoothing it out so it would be less noticeable, and then shouldered the bag and went back to Dean.

I pulled the gag out of his mouth before moving behind him with the lockpick. “What’s with the tarp?” he rasped.

“Devil’s Trap,” I explained, struggling with the lock. “We didn’t know what we were getting into, and didn’t want to kill Mitch or Thrace if we could avoid it.”

“Y/N, it's—” 

“Ssh!” I froze, listening. There were footsteps above.

Through the phone, I heard, “ _ So, Dean’s still hungover down here?” _

“Shit!” I hissed, just as the basement door opened. I pressed the lockpick into Dean’s hands and scampered across the room into the shadows beneath the stairs, ducking behind a few storage bins as Sam’s feet came into view on the steps in front of me. I slipped my hand into my pocket and hung up the phone. 

I held my breath and watched through the slats. Sam stepped onto the dropcloth and then off to the side, pretending to search for a light switch along the wall. Mitch was right behind him, but Thrace was still halfway up the stairs when Mitch tried to move forward. Met with the barrier of the Trap, he whipped around just as Thrace hit the second to last step and shouted up the stairs.

“Don’t move! It’s a Devil’s Trap!”

Thrace’s foot froze mid-step. Sam spun to face him, his knife drawn. Thrace’s foot lowered. Then, he hopped off the side of the stairs, avoiding the Trap completely, and turned to Sam.

“You can put that down, Sam.”

“I don’t think so.”

From my vantage point, Thrace’s back was to me. Over his shoulder, Sam looked murderous. I could just make out Dean across the room, discreetly fiddling with the lockpick. I kicked myself for failing to free him sooner; I wished Sam could’ve bought us more time.

“Really, Sam, I just wanna talk,” Thrace said. He surveyed the room, eyes briefly lighting on Dean.

Sam lunged forward with the knife. He almost made it, but Thrace flicked his hand and sent Sam flying against the wall. Thrace held him there, immobilized. The knife clattered across the floor, coming to rest mere feet from me. 

Footsteps above me caught my attention as another demon hurried down. Mitch shouted a warning, and he stuttered at the last step, then skirted the Trap the same way Thrace had. When the light caught his face I recognized Garrett from the warehouse. “Everything good?” he asked.

“I’ve got it under control. But stick around,” Thrace said. Garrett positioned himself near the center of the room, about halfway between Sam and Dean, like Thrace’s bodyguard. 

Thrace turned his attention back to Sam. “I said I just wanted to talk, Sam, and I meant it.” He crossed to the bar, grabbed a stool, and dragged it back in front of Sam. “It’s been awhile.”

Sam’s eyes narrowed. “Do I know you?”

“Right. The meatsuit. Sorry about that, had to go incognito on this one. It’s Judith.”

Judith.

Of  _ course _ it was Judith. 

Sam was confused; I could feel it and see him wracking his brain for her name, but she missed it entirely. “Anyway, I know last time didn’t really go the way any of us wanted, but I’m running the show now, and I’m willing to make a deal.”

“I don’t deal with demons.”

I could practically hear her rolling her—Thrace’s—eyes when she said, “Except, you know, last year, when all this started. I guess you’re trying to be all righteous now after what you did to your girl back in Jersey?”

“What I did—?” He was floundering, struggling to follow her. I could feel a deep-seated unease and doubt churning in him. His eyes had lost their hard resolve; they darted from her to Dean, searching. 

Judith snorted. “I assume she’s here? Probably set the Trap, right?” She hopped off the stool and walked toward the bar, peering behind it as if expecting to find me there. “Come on out, Y/N, I know you missed me.”

She waited, then shrugged when I didn’t respond. But Garrett wasn’t so easily distracted, and he picked up where she left off on the far side of the room, casually searching in the shadows for me. 

There were a few supplies in my pack. Ruby’s knife lay only feet from me. But if I moved too soon, I’d give myself away for nothing.

Judith continued. “We aren’t really interested in her anymore, anyway. We’re close, Sam! We just, well, we could use you. Think of it as a second chance.”

“Use me for what, exactly?”

She leaned against the bar. “Your abilities! We’ve got the blood samples. We’ve manipulated everything from the lab. We’ve got a strong bloodline right now, but we have no good way to test it, and it’s hard to keep a lot of them under control.”

Sam frowned, the line between his brows deepening. “Abilities?”

She nodded. “You were a good leader, Sam. You’re powerful. Come back.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Dean snapped. “Sam’s been in the Pit since a week ago; I got him out myself!”

I could give him credit, at least, for the performance. For trying when I couldn’t even will myself to move. Even Garrett stopped to stare at him. Judith gawked and then laughed. “You’re kidding me, right? You—” But she finally caught the confounded expression on Sam’s face. She pushed off the bar and walked over to him, standing just inches away. “Something’s different about you.”

My attention was split between their interaction and Garrett, who was creeping closer to me. He had disappeared for a moment to search a closet at the back of the room, but was moving around the couch now, headed straight to my hiding place. I wasn’t well hidden—if he moved just one box he’d find me, and I’d be completely trapped. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sam snarled, but despite his bravado I could feel his utter bewilderment. Judith was now leaning toward him, her face turned up to his throat. She inhaled, deeply, and then leapt away from him as if burned.

“You have your soul back. How...” She spun toward Dean, eyes black. “What did you do?!”

“I told you,” he said, his voice low, “I got him out myself.”

Judith looked murderous. She stalked over to Dean, lips curled in a sadistic grin. I didn’t know if he’d managed to unlock the cuffs; he could’ve been helpless. I took my chance.

* * *

Dean saw it all happen. In the days and weeks that followed, he would replay that night over and over, finding every mistake, every moment he could have done something differently. But as Cas would tell him later, there was nothing he could have done to protect Y/N or his brother; they’d constructed a reality that was too feeble, too unstable to last.

He’d freed his hands just minutes after Judith had trapped Sam, but was waiting to make his move. Apparently, Y/N had the same idea. The moment she lunged for the knife, he watched for Judith to turn from him and kicked his legs out. His foot connected with the back of her knee and she lurched forward, giving him time to jump to his feet.

He had just a second to see Y/N take a swipe at Garett with the knife before Judith was up and they were locked in a fierce hand-to-hand scuffle. Thrace wasn’t a small guy, and his large frame would’ve been difficult even without demon strength, but without a weapon Dean hoped he could at least steer her into the Trap. 

But Judith saw right through it. Dean barely dodged a right-cross and then she sent him flying, telekinetic energy  just flinging him across the room. He heard Sam shout his name as his head hit the side of the bar with a resounding  _ crack _ . He lay crumpled on the floor, the wind knocked out of him, the room spinning. Judith was striding toward him, her own knife now in hand. Over her shoulder, Dean saw the orange flash as Y/N thrust Ruby’s knife between Garrett’s ribs. 

Judith leaned over him. “You weren’t supposed to be part of this at all, Dean,” she said. “Just Sam and Y/N. You could be tucked into bed right now with your woman beside you, completely unaware of all of this.”

Dean blinked and tried to focus. A blurry Y/N was creeping up behind Judith, the knife raised. Dean knew he had to keep her talking. “Yeah, well, shit happens.” He was wheezing, struggling to suck in enough air. “But hey, look on the brightside, you—”

But with Y/N within inches of her, Judith sensed her and spun. She snatched Y/N’s wrist and twisted. Y/N shouted in pain as the knife fell from her hand.

“Let her go!” Sam shouted, but Y/N threw her opposite elbow and smacked Judith across the chin. Judith staggered but held on. When she raised her head, blood was dripping from the corner of Thrace’s mouth. 

“You’ve been more trouble than you’re worth,” she hissed, wrenching Y/N’s arm further and forcing her to bend forward, desperate to alleviate the pressure on her wrist. As she did, the chain fell from under her collar, revealing the compass dangling from her neck.

“What’s  _ that _ ?” Judith wondered, using the tip of her knife to lift the metal disc. Dean pulled himself up and began to stagger toward them.

“It’s mine,” Sam snapped. “I gave it to her.”

Judith paid him no attention. She wrapped her hand around the chain and yanked; Y/N’s head jerked forward, but the links snapped. Judith held it up to her face. 

“Where did you get this?” she gasped, dropping Y/N in her surprise. “Oh, darling, you’ve just given us the key.” In the moment she was distracted, Y/N again snatched the knife and attacked.

The demon sidestepped and slashed back, barely missing Y/N’s shoulder. Dean followed their movements, ready to intervene. Y/N shot forward and Judith planted a solid kick to her stomach that sent her sprawling. Dean threw himself at Judith, plowing into her legs and knocking her forward. The compass flew from her hand as she hit the ground, but she swung the knife toward his face. He rolled away from her just as it sliced past his ear. When he looked back up, Judith had leapt to her feet and Y/N was charging her head-on. As Y/N closed in, Judith raised the knife.

Helpless, he and Sam both bellowed at her to move. Y/N saw the blade and dodged a half-step back. The knife missed its target in her chest; it plunged instead into her stomach.

Y/N’s scream was a feral howl, but it was nothing to the roar that erupted from Sam. Dean got his legs beneath him and sprung toward them.

He was blasted back by a force of pure energy. Y/N was on the ground, folded over herself. Judith had released the knife and stood frozen mid-turn, back twisted in a grotesque arch, her mouth half open and twitching. Then, she began to seize, Thrace’s body undulating with small tremors. A wicked grin took over Thrace’s features. “See, Sam?” she choked. “I told you we could use you.”

Behind her, Sam was no longer trapped. He stood a foot from the wall, his right hand extended and clenched in a fist. His eyes were murderous. The remaining demon was cowering as far away from Sam as the Trap would allow. 

Black smoke coughed from Thrace’s mouth. His body continued to jerk and spasm. Judith shrieked, agonized, then unleashed a high cackle. “Not yet, Sam!” she screeched, and opened Thrace’s mouth and evicted herself, black smoke swirling through the room and out the open basement window. Thrace’s body dropped in a limp heap.

For a moment, everything was still. Then Sam shook himself and stood gaping dumbstruck at the scene before him, then down at his hands. He stood, frozen. 

Dean propelled himself up and toward Y/N. She was curled on her side, panting in short, rapid breaths. The knife was still embedded in her stomach, protruding at an angle toward her left hip. A red stain was quickly blooming around it. “I’m not—I can’t—Help—”

“Easy,” he said. “You gotta stay calm.” He looked over his shoulder at Sam. He was still just standing there, staring blankly at the two of them. “Sam! Snap out of it!”

Sam blinked and seemed to come back to himself. Fear spread over his features, and he moved toward them. “Y/N, I— “ And then, suddenly, he collapsed.

Panic flooded Dean’s system. He took off his flannel, balled it up, and placed it around the knife. He rolled Y/N onto her back, took her hands, and pressed them over it. She gasped in pain. “I need you to hold this here, okay?”

She nodded, biting her lip; he could tell she was terrified. “You’re gonna be fine, just hang on.” He left her and hurried to his brother, his head throbbing. He felt dizzy—probably a concussion—but he didn’t have time to worry about it. Sam was on his back, wide-eyed, staring at the ceiling, the muscles in this neck straining. Dean dropped to his knees and grabbed his shoulder. “Sam! Hey!” Sam stilled. His eyes slipped shut. 

“No no no no no, we cannot do this right now, Sam.” His mind was reeling. Was this what Cas had warned them about? Had he lost Sam already? He felt for a pulse and released a breath when he found one, but Sam didn’t budge.

“Dean?”

He looked around. Thrace was sitting up now. “What’s going on?”

Dean looked from Thrace, to Y/N, to the demon in the Trap, to his brother.  

He didn’t know what to do.

“You’ve been possessed!” he blurted. “Get out of here!”

Thrace looked like he thought Dean had lost his mind. “What the fuck, Winchester?”

Without waiting to see if Thrace would move, Dean grabbed the front of Sam’s jacket and tried to shake him awake. “Come on, Sammy, come on, dammit!” He glanced over at Y/N. Her eyes closed were closed, her face pale. “Hey! Y/N! You doin’ okay?”

She groaned and nodded. “Sam— “

“He’s fine, just keep pressure on that and stay awake! Sammy, Sam, hey, come on, man, we’ve gotta go.” He couldn’t breathe; his chest hurt in every way imaginable and he found himself straining to focus when, with a great gulp of air Sam’s eyes opened and breath whooshed back into Dean’s lungs. “Hey, you with me?”

Sam blinked rapidly and sat up. “Dean, what—Y/N!” He shoved past his brother and rushed to her side, whatever he’d just gone through completely forgotten in his desperation to reach her. Thrace still stood agape in the middle of the basement. The demon wearing Mitch’s suit started to snicker.

Y/N was struggling to stay alert. Blood was staining the edges of Dean’s shirt where she held it against the wound. “Stay with me, baby,” Sam said, and she blearily gazed up at him. 

“I’m okay,” she breathed. “Just get me out of here.” 

Sam scooped her into his arms.  “Go,” Dean said. “I’ll deal with this mess and meet you at Sioux Falls General.”

Sam didn’t hesitate; he took the stairs three at a time and was gone. 

“What the hell is going on, Dean?”

Dean turned to Thrace. His hands were shaking. “Just a minute,” he said. He walked over to where Mitch stood in the Devil’s Trap. His expression suddenly fell. “I’d say I’m sorry,” Dean said. “But I’m not.” He rattled off the exorcism as if he were listing multiplication tables. The demon exited Mitch and sunk through the floor, back into Hell.

Mitch shook himself into awareness much more quickly than Thrace had. “What—”

Dean rubbed his aching head. “I need a ride back to my car. I can explain everything on the way. Then I need you two to get a hotel for the night, so I can take care of that body.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was not an easy chapter to write. I hope you enjoyed it! As always, the kudos and comments are SO appreciated and keep motivating me to continue this. Thank you!
> 
> (Also, the thing about demons smelling souls came up once in season 4, so I ran with it.)


	27. Chapter 27

Sam sped toward the hospital, white-knuckled on the wheel. Y/N was slumped in the passenger seat, hands limply pressed against the now blood-soaked flannel. He split his attention, eyes darting back and forth from the dark road and her too-pale face. She was barely clinging to consciousness, her breathing too rapid and shallow, and he was terrified.

He pulled up to the ER and carried her inside, shouting for help. The staff took one look at the blood covering them both and whisked her away from him. He stood, feeling helpless, as she disappeared behind the swinging doors.

She had never been hurt before. Not like this. They’d always been careful, or lucky. Keeping her out of harm’s way was his  _ job _ . He had never failed to protect her before. And somehow he felt it was his fault. She’d warned him; he hadn’t listened. 

He was exhausted. He had a splitting headache. He parked the car and then paced from the waiting room, to the hallway, through the cafeteria and back in a continuous loop.

_ What had just happened? _

Images flashed behind his eyes and he didn’t know whether they were dreams or memories. Who was Judith? What had she been talking about? And then...what had he done to her?  _ How? _ She’d stabbed Y/N, and he’d somehow broken free of her restraints and he’d somehow accessed powers he hadn’t tapped into in years, and then he’d collapsed and he’d gone to the Cage. It had felt like a week of relived torment, Lucifer’s face taunting him as he boiled, until he’d woken up.

But he could almost forget that. Somehow  _ that  _ bothered him less than the unease roiling in him. Why had she known him? Why was she talking about his abilities, about demon deals? He’d only just come back; she’d acted like she’d known him months ago.

On his seventh pass through the cafeteria, Judith’s words suddenly echoed through his mind: “ _ I guess you’re trying to be all righteous now after what you did to your girl back in Jersey _ .”

Sam was absolutely certain he could never do anything that would even come close to hurting Y/N. It had to be some mind game, some demon trick to rattle him. Unless she meant when Lucifer had him. Hadn’t Dean said something along those lines? That could be it. But still, something nagged at him, something dark and familiar.

On his twelfth pass, it hit him so abruptly he stopped pacing.  _ “Ever since New Jersey I can’t sleep without seeing you like that.” _

She’d said it was a slip, that she’d meant Detroit. Dean had brushed it off when he’d asked.  
  
His heart started to pound. Something wasn’t right. They weren’t telling him everything.

But he’d just come back last week. He couldn’t have  _ done _ anything. 

After he’d paced his route for the fifteenth time, he found Dean standing in the ER lobby, looking around with his phone against his ear. Sam took his phone from his pocket to see he had four missed calls from his brother. 

Dean saw him and walked over. “Any news?”

Sam shook his head.

Dean lowered himself into the nearest chair. He handed Sam a bottle of water. “Sit,” he said. “Drink.”

Sam reluctantly sat down. He took the water but didn’t open it. “You should probably get checked out, too.”

Dean shrugged. “I’ve had worse. Anyway, I took care of ‘Garrett’ and called Bobby. He said he’ll head back as soon as he can.”

Sam was quiet.

“Hey. She’ll be okay.”

Sam shifted in his chair. “Dean...what aren’t you telling me?”

“What? About what?”

Sam sighed and rubbed his forehead. “Can we not do this?”

Dean painted the most baffled expression possible onto his face. “Not do  _ what _ , Sam?”

“ _ That _ . Act like you don’t know. What the hell was that back there? Who the hell was that demon? You and Y/N have been avoiding something since I came back, but how long have I really been back, Dean?”

“You’ve been back a week, Sam, not counting the few days you were out of it. I went in and got you myself.”

“You told me  _ Cas _ brought me back.”

“Well, yeah, he helped.” Sam caught the slight stutter as he tripped to cover himself.

“Both Y/N and Judith mentioned New Jersey.”

“And I told you, she followed Lucifer there, and shit went down.”

Sam crossed his arms. “And I’m supposed to believe that?”

“What do you want me to say, Sam?”

“I want you to tell me the truth!” A few people lifted their heads in their direction at his outburst.  Dean rubbed his eyes.

Something else occurred to Sam. “She said I had my soul  _ back. _ ”

“Yeah? So? What does that even mean, Sam? It’s just demons being demons. Let it go.”

“Let it—”

“Mr. Simmons?”

They looked up at the doctor who had come over. Sam straightened. “How is she?”

She indicated the open seat next to Sam. “I’m Dr. Shadel. Mind if I sit?”

“Sure.”

She sat down and pushed her glasses up onto her head. “She’s very lucky,” she said, smiling. “The knife missed most of her vital organs. We will have to remove some of her small intestine, but beyond that, there isn’t too much damage.” 

Sam breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank God.”

“We gave her a unit of blood, and we’re going to take her back to surgery. It’ll be a few hours until you can get in to see her, and then we’ll probably keep her overnight to be safe, but assuming there are no complications, she’ll be good to go in the morning.”

Sam could have hugged her. “Thank you.”

She nodded, then grew more serious. “There’s one more thing. Have you filed a police report? We have security here who can help you, if you plan to.”

Sam stared blankly at her. He hadn’t been in the right mindset to come up with a cover story. Fortunately, Dean leaned forward. “I did,” he said. “Before I got here.”

Dr. Shadel seemed to notice him for the first time. “Were you attacked, too?”

He nodded. “We were walking home when they jumped us. Sam got Y/N here and I called the police on site.”

“Do you need to be seen, too?”

Dean shook his head. “I’ll be fine.”

She didn’t look convinced. “Well, I just wanted to make sure all bases were covered. I hope they catch whoever did this.” She stood. “I’ll try to send someone out with an update sooner, but if not, you’ll see me in a few hours.”

Dean clapped Sam on the shoulder. “Look at that. Told you she’d be okay.”

The relief Sam felt quickly evaporated. He brushed Dean’s hand off and stood.

His brother raised his eyebrows. 

“I’m taking a walk,” Sam said. “When you want to tell me the truth, come find me.” He turned and marched away down the hall, resuming his route from before.

He knew Dean wouldn’t follow him, that whatever he was keeping from him was too big, too tenuous, to reveal. A part of Sam even believed that Dean wasn’t lying to him; that whatever had happened back in the basement was just as baffling to everyone else as it was to Sam.

But he knew Dean. And he knew when Dean was lying.

That, and a sense of deep, absolute  _ wrongness _ had settled like silt at the bottom of his stomach. He’d nearly killed a demon with his mind, a demon who knew him and was thrilled at his capabilities, a demon who called him a leader, who mentioned some wrongdoing to Y/N, who looked aghast and turned on Dean upon sensing his soul. 

He couldn’t make any of those pieces fit together in any coherent pattern. There were too many gaps. The only clear memory in his mind was his waking up in the bunker and finding Y/N and his brother again. Before that, falling into the Cage with Lucifer. In between...nothing, save for the flashback of Hell he’d had an hour ago. 

He didn't know what to make of it. He felt like he’d been thrown into a lake with half a rowboat and no paddle. Trying to grasp at anything concrete was as fruitless as trying to keep it afloat.

When he returned to the lobby after nearly an hour of wandering hospital corridors, Dean was gone. There was a text on his phone that read: “Gone back to Bobby’s. Call if you need me.”

Sam sat down and started his long vigil. 

* * *

Dean was on the phone with Lisa before he’d even left the parking lot.

He told her everything: the events of the past twenty-four hours, Y/N's close call, Sam’s collapse, his incessant questions. He told her how scared he was that it was all about to shatter. He could do this with her, only with her, for reasons he didn’t understand and couldn’t bring himself to analyze. And when he had finished pouring it out to her, he said, “I just wanna be home.”

“I know,” she said. “But you can’t.”

“Lis, I—”

“You’re a hunter, Dean. I don’t like it either, but it’s who you are. And you have to see it through.”

He swallowed. “I love you.”

He heard the smile in her voice, despite her weariness. “I know. I love you, too.”

“I’m sorry about all of this.”

She sighed. “I knew what I was signing up for. It’s been worth it, Dean. Just don’t get killed.”

He snorted. “We’re two out of three for ER visits, and these things come in threes.”

“You’re not funny.”

“I’m hilarious!”

She laughed. His spirits lifted. “Call me tomorrow, okay? Let me know Y/N’s okay.”

“Will do.”

He hung up as he pulled into the salvage yard. Inside, he triple checked the salt lines, the traps, the barriers. Then, he began packing their things, shoving clothes back into duffels, tossing whatever hair-face-girl stuff Y/N had spread over the bathroom counter into her bag. The doc said Y/N would be good to leave in the morning, and he intended to have them headed out of town the minute she was mobile. It wasn’t safe for them to stay here; he needed to get them back to the bunker. 

He needed to get Sam away from all this.

He took a shower, scanning his body for damage. A purple bruise was forming across his right side. There was a goose egg on the back of his head. He’d live. Y/N would live. Sam would live, but only if they were more careful.

They needed to find the Horn. They needed to put this one to bed and move on with their lives. 

He turned off the water, dried off, and changed. He had no appetite, but he rummaged for food in the kitchen and forced himself to choke down a can of chili and some crackers. He wanted a drink, but he thought he was concussed and thought better of it. 

He plugged in his phone, turned the volume up, and sat in front of the TV watching reruns of  _ Gilligan’s Island _ without following the plot. He checked his phone every ten minutes, hoping for an update, not really expecting to get one. He thought about calling for Cas, but realized he probably wouldn’t get a response and didn’t see the point. 

He drifted off into some kind of half-sleep, snippets of  _ Gilligan _ slipping into dreams of demons and memories of Sam jumping into the Cage. Sometime around 2 a.m. he woke up with a jolt as the door opened and Bobby came in, looking haggard and filthy. 

He checked his phone. He had a text from Sam from an hour ago. It just read:  _ Y/N’s awake. She’s okay. They can discharge her probably first thing in the morning. _

His head flopped back against the couch in relief.

“Good news?”

Dean nodded. “We’ll be out of here in—” he checked his watch, “Five hours, maybe?”

Bobby gave him a once-over. “I hope you’re plannin’ on some more sleep, first.”

Dean grunted. 

“You know, you can stay here, too.”

“We need to go, Bobby. Demons obviously know we’re here.  I need to get them home so Y/N can heal somewhere safe and Sam—”

“Speaking of your brother, what are you gonna tell him?”

“Nothing.”

“ _ Really _ . And he’s not gonna do everything he can to find out now that he’s been tipped off?”

“What do you want me to do, Bobby? The more he knows, the more likely that wall Cas built comes crashing down and then what? I can’t lose him again.”

“I’m just sayin’, it ain’t gonna be pretty when he finds out you two’ve been lying to him.”

Dean sighed and settled back into the couch. Bobby waved his hand at him in dismissal and began climbing the stairs. 

Dean called after him. “Wake me up in a few hours, alright? We’ve gotta hit the road. And Bobby?” He paused. “You might wanna talk to Thrace and Mitch. They were still pretty rattled when I told them what happened.”

He closed his eyes, but heard Bobby mutter a frustrated, “Idjits” as he continued up the stairs.

* * *

I opened my eyes to the sterile white of a hospital room. Beside me, a nurse was reading what had to be  _ my _ vitals from the monitor near my bed. I had wires all over me; EKG on my chest, an IV in my left arm, plastic oxygen thing clipped to my finger. I looked down at myself, the smooth green hospital gown draped over me, and gently touched my stomach, wincing at the tenderness.

I was alive. 

I hadn’t expected to be. The last thing I remembered was the car’s leather pressed against my face and Sam screaming at me to stay with him as blood oozed between my fingers. As I’d sunk into a warm darkness I’d thought, _ This is it. This is how I go.  _

But here I was. 

“Look who’s awake,” the nurse crooned, smiling. “How you feeling? A little drowsy, still?”

I had a serious case of cotton mouth, so I just nodded. She held a cup with a straw in front of my mouth, and I took a long drink. 

“Thanks.”

“Do you remember what happened?”

_ We were rescuing Dean. Things went wrong. Judith stabbed me in the stomach.  _

“I was attacked.” I wondered what story—if any—Sam and Dean had given, and hoped she wouldn’t press for details. 

“That’s right,” she said. “You were in pretty bad shape when you got here. You were given a unit of blood to replace what you lost, and then we went into surgery to repair your intestine and stitch you up.”

I pulled the gown aside to look. I had three small, separate stitches and a longer stitching where the knife had been, but it was nothing like I would have expected.  
“It’s laparoscopic procedure, so the surgeon didn’t have to open you all the way,” she explained. Then she looked at me seriously. “Now I have to ask you this, and I hope you won’t be offended, but I need you to be honest with me: was this a domestic dispute? Do you feel safe with your husband?”

_ Husband? _ My brain was moving slowly. It stuck on the word until I remembered the three of us shared fake insurance cards and IDs with matching last names in case of times like this. I gaped at her; the question, though probably a logical part of procedure and policy, was so absurd I gave a surprised laugh that had me immediately gasping in pain and clutching my stomach. 

“Careful,” she said. “You’re gonna be sore for awhile.”

When I could breathe again, I said, “Sam would  _ never _ . No. It’s not like that. I don’t know who attacked me.”

The answer seemed to satisfy her. “Alright. Do you want me to go get him?”

_ More than anything in the world. _ “Please.”

“Alright. Sit tight, I’ll be right back.”

I was so tired. My abdomen ached, and my whole body felt stiff. I was drowsy and nauseated from the anesthesia, but I was far from relaxed. I didn’t feel safe here, where there was no warding and where demons certainly knew we were.

“Here he is!” The nurse entered followed by Sam. He looked awful—exhausted and strung-out and afraid—and there was still a rust-colored stain on the front of his jacket. He came alongside the bed and took my hand in both of his. I could sense the change in him. Beneath his evident concern for me was a silent, waiting indignation. He knew something; he was craving more.

The nurse spoke up. “Y/N, is there anything you need right now?”

I shook my head.

“I want you to drink all of this, okay?” she told me, passing the water cup to Sam. “Then we’re gonna try to get some food in you, make sure everything goes through alright before we get you out of here, okay?”

“Okay. Thank you.”

She left the room, pulling the curtains around the bed on her way out.

Sam leaned over and kissed my forehead, then smoothed my hair back before sitting down. He was uneasy, but relief and affection washed over him. I waited for a question, an interrogation, maybe a stream of apologies. Judith had said too much, but I didn’t know how much he knew.

But he surprised me. He smiled, and I lost myself in his eyes for a moment, suspended in his warmth. “How are you?”

“I feel like shit. How bad is it?”

He swallowed. “Bad enough.” He squeezed my hand. “I hoped I’d never see you in here.”

He was burying everything for my sake. Whatever he knew, or didn’t know, whatever anger was lying in wait was all secondary to what was right in front of him: me, fresh off the operating table, an incision in my gut, wires and tubes connecting me to monitors to ensure my survival. I knew Sam. Suppressing and bottling were second nature to him. He would wait until he was positive that I was absolutely okay, and then he’d crack open. For now, though, he just needed me here, awake and breathing in front of him with a steady heartbeat.

He loved me like mad. I would always come first. I sensed the fallout of the night’s events lurking in the distance, but Sam was gazing at me with such adoration, I thought maybe that love could keep him from running when he realized the truth. Maybe the love shared between us, and between him and Dean, would smooth it out. It had before, after all. 

“It was bound to be my turn eventually.”

He frowned. “That’s not funny.”

“I’m okay, Sam”

“You almost weren’t.”

His guilt rose like a wave threatening to engulf both of us. “Stop. Really, Sam, don’t do that.”

He looked down. His thumb traced soft circles into the back of my hand. “What do you need?”

“A vacation.”

His lips twitched in the hint of a smile. “I hear California’s nice this time of year.”

“Isn’t California nice every time of year?”

“Here, drink.” He held the straw to my lips. “We’ll be out of here soon.”

I sucked down about a third of the water. “Back to the bunker?”

He nodded. “It’s the safest place for you while you heal.”

I didn’t like the sound of that, of sitting idly while the the Horn was still missing. I suddenly yanked my hands from his and clutched at my chest, fumbling with the collar of the hospital gown. “Sam, the compass!”

“Easy,” he said, taking my hands in his again. “Dean has it. We’re okay.”

“But they know we have it now, they’ll come after us!”

“Hey, hey, you’re okay. That’s why we’re going back to Kansas as soon as possible. No one’s laying a hand on you, alright? Dean’s packing up our gear right now so we’re ready once you’re discharged. We’ve got you.”

“We have to finish this thing, Sam. It’s our only way out.”

He kissed my hand and I closed my eyes. “I know. We will. One thing at a time.”

* * *

It was just after 8 a.m. when I was officially discharged and sent back into the world, armed with a fresh change of clothes, a prescription for Percocet, and strict orders to avoid any physical activity more strenuous than walking for at least a couple of weeks. I was able to walk to the car on my own, albeit gingerly and slowly, though Sam didn’t leave my side.

Dean had pulled the Impala as close to the front doors as he could. He got out when he saw us, grinning like a madman as he got out and carefully hugged me. “I’m getting you some body armor,” he said, opening the passenger door.

“Shotgun?” I raised my eyebrows.

“Sam’s driving,” he explained. “And the seat reclines. I figured you’d be more comfortable if you could adjust.”

“ _ Sam’s _ driving?”

He tapped his temple. “Still a little rattled. Not sure I should be.”

I wondered if that were true. He’d driven through worse, and I doubted Sam had slept at all. It was more likely that he was putting distance between himself and his brother. If Dean was asleep—or successfully pretending to be asleep—in the backseat, Sam couldn’t interrogate him.

We settled in for the six hour drive to Lebanon. Sam took the turns gently, but any bumps or jarring were agonizing, even with the pain meds taking the edge off. Sam kept up a steady stream of conversation to keep me distracted—and probably to keep himself awake. We talked the first few hours about inconsequential things: music on the radio, current world events (brought to us by NPR, once Dean was asleep and couldn’t complain), billboards we passed... normal, safe topics. But eventually I was drifting in and out of the thread of conversation so much that Sam let it trail off, and I half-dozed against the window.

We stopped about halfway home when Sam just couldn’t fight his exhaustion anymore. He helped me out—any movement beyond walking was excruciating—so I could stretch my legs and use the restroom, we grabbed coffee and snacks, and Sam and Dean switched places. Sam was snoring loudly within five miles.

Dean turned down the music. “So. How’re you doing?”

“I’ve been better,” I admitted. “But I could be a lot worse. I’m alive, right?”

He nodded, keeping his eyes on the road. “I should’ve gotten to her sooner.”

“Can we just agree to let Judith carry the blame for this one?”  
  


He sighed and glanced at Sam in the rearview mirror. “What about Sam?”

“He knows something, but he’s covering it up with worrying about me. Did you talk?”

“It was like the Spanish Inquisition. I dodged what I could, but he knows something isn’t right. You heard Judith. So did he. So he’s gonna wonder.”

“What’re we gonna do?”

“Nothing,” he said firmly. “But once you’re stronger, he’ll come asking you, too. Be ready.”

“Maybe we should tell him the truth. It’s going to be worse if we don’t. If he tries to dig something up, it might damage the wall more than just hearing it from us.”

A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Maybe.” He wasn’t convinced.

“I hate lying to him, Dean. And I’m afraid of losing him again.”

“We won’t,” he snapped. “Okay? We won’t.”

And that was the end of  _ that _ conversation. 

When we finally returned to the bunker that afternoon, Sam helped me inside, one hand resting in the small of my back to guide me to my room. The guidance wasn’t really necessary; the doctor had told me to walk because movement was good, but Sam needed to feel useful, to play the caretaker, and I was aching and drowsy and appreciated it anyway.

“Do you need anything?” Sam asked once I was settled in bed.

“I just want to sleep for like three weeks,” I yawned. 

He leaned over and kissed me. “Sleep. I’ll be right here.”

* * *

Once he was sure Y/N was asleep, Sam got up as carefully as he could and quietly left the room, leaving the door partially open in case she needed one of them. When he emerged into the library, Dean was sitting at the table eating a sandwich. 

“Y/N asleep?” he asked around a mouthful of food.

Sam nodded. 

“Honestly Sam, we should probably get some real sleep, too. It’s been a rough 24 hours.”

“Longer for you,” Sam said. “But you’re right. Everything else can wait.”

Dean finished his sandwich, then stood up and clapped his brother on the shoulder. “Now you’re talking.” He headed down the hallway to his own room.

But Sam had no intention of sleeping. He waited a solid twenty minutes after Dean had gone, then headed to the lab. Moving as soundlessly as possible, he searched through the lab’s stores until he found what he was looking for, then went to the garage, started up one of the classic cars, and drove out into the twilight. 

He drove several towns over, just to be safe, and pulled onto the shoulder of a gravel road. He grabbed the box from the passenger seat, dropped his ID inside, and got out. In the middle of the crossroad, he dug a hole with his fingers, dropped the box in, and covered it. He straightened and stood waiting, the Colt ready at his side.

He didn’t have to wait long.

“Oh no. _ Hell _ no.”

He spun around. He didn’t recognize this particular demon, but she matched the typical small-framed brunette that most crossroads demons tended to possess. Sam pointed the gun at her. To his surprise, she held up her hands.

“I  _ can’t _ deal with you, Winchester.”

He wasn’t here to deal, but her insistence caught him off guard. “Why not?”

“Why not? Because your soul’s off-limits. I’m not touching that. No way.”

“Explain.”

“You’re not even supposed to  _ have _ your soul,” she said. “That was the deal. You got to leave the Cage, get topside, work with us to find the Horn, but only if Lucifer got to keep the fun part. But then your brother  had to meddle, and he went in and got it out right under the Boss’s nose. But  _ technically _ , he’s still supposed to have it. I’m not taking any chances with a contract. Sorry, not sorry.”

Sam’s heart quickened. S he was repeating the same things Judith had the other night.

“Okay,” Sam said. “No deals.” The demon seemed to relax, so he cocked the Colt and aimed it straight between her eyes. “But I’m gonna need you to start from the beginning.”

* * *

I woke up to shouting.

I was disoriented at first, heavy and slow from painkillers and the general fatigue that comes with injury, clawing my way out of unconsciousness to make sense of the noise. It took only moments for the adrenaline to hit me, my heart kicking up speed as I recognized Sam and Dean’s voices and felt a powerful surge of rage from Sam.

I got up slowly, hissing through the pain as I shuffled to the door and into the hallway toward the shouting.

“I was protecting you!”

“You  _ lied _ to me!”

I came to the edge of the hallway and stopped. They were both standing in the library, Sam just at the threshold of the War Room, the shoulders of his coat damp, his chest heaving. Dean stood facing him, barefoot in sweats and an undershirt, a glass of water in one hand. 

“I did what I had to do to keep you from going off the deep end! Do you  _ want  _ to remember the Cage?”

“That wasn’t your decision to make.”

“Then whose was it?” Dean yelled. He set his glass down on the table. “You weren’t in any condition to decide anything.”

Sam was seething, his anger a roiling boil. “You had no right to keep me in the dark.”

I couldn’t take it anymore. I stepped around the corner into the library. “But I did.” 

Sam’s expression immediately softened, the hard lines of his face smoothing into tender, gaping guilt. “Y/N—”

I walked toward him. “It wasn’t just about protecting you, Sam, it was about protecting me _ ,  _ too _. _ ”

Dean shot me a warning glare. “Y/N…”

Sam was silent, his throat working.

“Do you remember, Sam? Or did you just get the Cliff’s Notes?

“I remember enough.”

“I remember everything!” I snapped. “I couldn’t look at you or be near you because everytime I did, I went back to that warehouse!”

His anger welled back up. “Then you should’ve told me! I spent this whole time thinking you were still afraid of what Lucifer did, when it was me—”

“It  _ wasn’t _ you, Sam!” Dean barked.

“It was part of me! And you just wanted to gloss over that?”

“I wanted to forget. It was easier if I wasn’t feeling your guilt, too. Think about how that has to feel, Sam.”

“How’s it feel now?” He spat it with malice, like venom, but even as it cut me it couldn’t bury his absolute remorse. 

Dean stepped between us. “That’s enough, Sammy.”

“You’re right,” Sam said. “It is. I’m leaving.”

Panic fluttered in my gut. “Like hell you are,” Dean growled.

Sam scoffed. “You really expect me to stay?”

I could not lose him again. I reached for his arm. “Please, Sam.”

“I’m sorry.” He was furious with me, but his apology was genuine. I didn’t know what part, exactly, he was apologizing for. He turned and started for the stairs.

“No one is walking out on this family!” Dean followed him and grabbed him, but Sam jerked out of his grasp.

“I can’t be around you right now,” he growled. He shoved Dean out of the way, jogged the rest of the way up the stairs, and left.

Dean stormed past me back into the library. He stood in the center of the room, fists clenched, barely containing his anger and frustration. Then he suddenly roared, grabbed the glass from the table, and chucked it across the library where it shattered against the wall.

I was suddenly clammy and lightheaded. I staggered to the nearest chair and slowly sat, pressing my forehead into my hand. I listened to Dean continue huffing around the room, until he came and knelt in front of me.

“Hey, you okay?”

I nodded. “Go get Sam.”

His face darkened. “You heard him. He doesn’t want to be here.”

“ _ No _ . I don’t trust him to be okay or safe. Go. Get. Him. At least follow him.”

“He’s an adult. He’ll be fine.” He was feigning apathy and failing. 

_ “Dean _ .”

He shook his head. “And leave you here alone? I don’t think so.”

I groaned. “I’ll be  _ fine _ . It’s safe here. And I’m not dying.”

“Fine.” He stood and noticed the glass shards glistening on the floor. “But let me get this first, and you need to eat something. You look like you’re about to keel over.”

“I can get it.”

He rolled his eyes. “Look, suffragette, I know you  _ can  _ do whatever you want, but you’re not so great at moving right now, so you’re going to sit there and eat something while I deal with it. Sam can wait ten minutes.”

I felt too miserable to argue. He went into the kitchen and came back a few minutes later with a sandwich and a glass of water, then grabbed a broom and began sweeping up the mess while I forced myself to eat. 

When he came back after throwing away the glass, he’d also changed and looked ready to go. He hesitated, keys in hand, eyeing my almost empty plate with a mixture of satisfaction and worry.

“Go, Dean. Bring him back.”

He crossed the room and clasped me on the shoulder. “Call.”

“I will.”

He gave me another reassuring squeeze and turned and left the bunker. As I took the dishes into the kitchen, it occurred to me that Dean was the one trying to hold all of us together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, I don't know where I'm going with this next. I obviously have SOME idea, but it's a rough outline. I want to wrap it up soon because it's grown much longer than I really want, but I'm also trying to balance my own agenda with the realities of what happens with Sam's wall on the show. I don't want to drag this out into the Sam psych ward scenario as the show, so I'm trying to work out how to wrap up this Horn plot and the Sam-wall plot without over or under-doing it. If you have any brilliant ideas...I won't object to some sharing.
> 
> In other news, I began working on a prequel to this. It starts set in Season 2 (I am so nostalgic for the original 5 seasons), and pretty much follows the trajectory of the show with a lot of in-between episodes stuff and, of course, the OC/Reader. I'll probably post the first chapter of that before the next chapter of this, so be on the lookout!


	28. Chapter 28

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a head's up: This takes a bit of a dark turn.

I’d wanted to go with Dean.

Sam was in turmoil. His maelstrom of rage and hurt and guilt swirled inside of me, a powerful cocktail that had my blood racing and my stomach in knots. I wanted to go to him, to help him push that away. But I was physically weak and emotionally shaken from the night before, and I knew, too, that this was something Dean needed to do, something they had to settle with one another before it could branch out to me. 

When Dean left, I got a change of clothes and headed for the shower. I’d gotten a sponge bath in the hospital, but I felt grimy and knew I had to keep the incision clean. The warm water was soothing; I kept my back to the spray so it wouldn’t directly hit the sutures, which were starting to blossom with dark bruises. I gingerly spread soap around them and shivered to think how close I’d come.

And Judith was still out there. 

I had changed and was dragging a comb through my hair when I heard the bang of the bunker door, followed by a shout.

As quickly as I could, I bolted down the hall, crossing through the library and halting just on the threshold of the war room. Castiel was leaning over the map table, hands braced against the back of a chair. He looked haggard; there was dirt on his face and the collar of his shirt was ripped. The trench coat was filthy. 

“Cas?” I took a few steps toward him.

A concerned V formed between his eyes. “You’re hurt,” he said. He extended his right hand and placed it on my temple, then winced and folded in on himself as his legs buckled. I grabbed his elbow, pain erupting in my stomach as I took on his weight, and helped lower him into a chair. He melded into it, sinking low so his head rested on the back. “I’m sorry...I’m too weak.”

“What happened to you?” I fell into a chair beside him, my hand still on his arm.

“Demons,” he said. “They ambushed me as I was leaving Jerusalem. They must have realized what I was up to.” He took a deep breath and looked up at me. “They know you have the compass.”

I wasn’t sure if it was a question. I nodded.

He fumbled his hand into one of his pockets, his fingers moving sluggishly, as if the synapses between his brain and hands weren’t firing quite right, almost as if he were drunk. He managed to fish out a small leather pouch and held it out to me with trembling fingers.

“The needle,” he said, by way of explanation. “I can explain, but…” His eyes closed. He heaved a sigh. His eyes opened, bright blue bursting out of dark circles. He straightened in his chair. “I need to rest.”

With Herculean effort he stood. I rose with him and grabbed him by the arm, surprised when he allowed me to guide him, thankful he could support his own weight. We made it to the first bedroom where he stopped, nodded a silent thanks, and closed the door.

I stood beyond it and listened to the bed springs squeak as he collapsed onto the mattress. Sam was gone. Dean was hunting him down. It was me and a broken angel. 

* * *

 

Sam drove until he was nearly out of gas—which wasn’t far in the Crown Vic he’d taken from the garage—and then he ditched the car in the alley behind a strip mall, hot wired a station wagon, and kept driving. He didn’t have a destination in mind, just needed to drive, to put distance between himself and Dean and Y/N. 

It was coming to him in flashes, quick snapshots of memory from a nightmare roll of film: A dozen demons bending to his command. The ones whose souls he’d tortured just by willing it, the way he had with Ruby. The lifeless, slack-eyed humans dangling from their wrists in the warehouse basement, IVs draining blood. Y/N’s face, washed out in the beam of his flashlight. Judith riding him, eyes black, bare breasts glistening in the dim light of the warehouse office. Castiel imploring him to keep trying, to earn their trust. Y/N’s eyes when he’d turned on her, her pleas as she cowered away from him.

He swerved as he felt his gorge rise and then slowed to take the next exit. He’d driven south from Lebanon and had just passed over I-70 into Ellsworth. Half a mile off the highway he saw an orange neon sign, and he pulled into the parking lot of a total dive where he knew he could sit in the dark and drink and disappear. 

Three quick shots of whiskey later, Sam tucked himself into a shadowy corner, pressed his back to the wall, and nursed the fourth—this one on the rocks—and willed his hands to stop shaking.

He couldn’t pinpoint the anger. Dean for lying to him, again. Y/N for lying to him, sure, but he couldn’t turn it on her without the crippling guilt that came with that. Himself, for letting it happen at all. Judith, for manipulating him. Lucifer, who’s fault this all was…

But...no. It was his own fault, wasn’t it? He’d sprung the Devil free.

He took another drink. Savored the burn and closed his eyes.

“Hello, Moose.”

He jumped, clinking the glass against his teeth and sloshing whisky on his collar. His blood boiled. “Crowley. What are you doing here?”

The demon’s lips raised in a slight smile, then dropped back to neutral. “I heard you killed my crossroads demon. I just wondered why, is all.”

Sam narrowed his eyes. “You don’t know?”

Crowley heaved a sigh and rolled his eyes. “I can  _ guess. _ Didn’t like what she had to say, was it?”

Sam clenched his fist around his glass. The other slid into his pocket where the Colt was still stashed. Crowley raised his eyebrows. “None of that,” he said, eyeing Sam’s hand. “We have a deal, remember?”

Sam didn’t remember—at least, not at first. Then it slammed into him so hard he sank back in the booth: his body stretched against the Cage, Lucifer leaning over him, teeth bared in a sickening grin as he dug a finger beneath Sam’s ribs and swirled it around in his liver, crooning, “ _ You want out, Sammy? All you have to do is sign _ …” and Crowley rocking on his heels just beyond the Cage, hands clasped behind his back and a grin on his face as Sam begged, pleaded, sobbed his consent— 

Sam’s mouth went dry. His heart rate skyrocketed, and he had a feeling Crowley could sense it.

Crowley grinned.

“What do you want?” His voice came out weaker than he’d hoped.

“You, and the empath,” Crowley said, giving a slight shrug. “But I’m also not an idiot—you have your soul now, so _that_ won’t likely happen. But need I remind you...you owe me.”

“I don’t owe you anything.”

Crowley raised his eyebrows. “No? Has no one told you? I’m the King of Hell, Sam. I snap my fingers, you’re right back in the Cage, soul and all.”

“You’re bluffing.” But Sam wasn’t sure. He was too worked up to be clear-headed, his judgment clouded with rage and pain and now fear. 

“Am I? You agreed to work for me. And currently...you’re playing for the wrong team.”

Sam bristled. He leaned across the table. “You used me.”

Crowley studied his fingernails. “Please. If you’re so concerned about who’s using whom, you might want to ask your angel friend.”

“What’re you talking about?” But even as he said it, the memory came back: Dean and Y/N cornering him in the motel room, telling him about his soul, about Cas working with Crowley, orchestrating the whole plot.

“Then again, you’re not innocent, either. You used Y/N, didn’t you?”

Sam lunged across the table and grabbed Crowley by the lapel, dragging his face within inches of Sam’s own. “Don’t you dare.”

“Put me down. I’m not the one you should be fighting.  _ I _ didn’t convince you to lock her up.  _ I  _ didn’t tell you to manipulate her. _ I  _ didn’t suggest you  _ rape _ her—”

Sam felt bile rise in his throat again. He tightened his grip.

“—or try to kill her the minute I thought I didn’t need her anymore.”

“Judith.”

“You really shouldn’t beat yourself up about this too much. You’re hardly responsible.”

In an instant, Sam had the Colt in his hand and the barrel pressed against Crowley’s throat. He was grateful for the darkness of the bar, of the noise from the crowd, for concealing them completely. “Where are they?”

“Why should I tell you?” 

Sam jabbed the barrel harder into the demon’s neck.

“Fine,” Crowley said. “I’ll tell you. But there’s one thing you need to understand.”

Sam waited.

“The Horn gets found, the person who blows it decides which souls go where. Are you sure you know who’s on your side?”

Sam cocked the hammer.  
  
“Wellington. Texas. You’ll know the place when you see it,” Crowley said, and then vanished, leaving Sam’s fist clenched around nothing.

He tucked the Colt away and went to the car, leaving his half-full drink at the table.

* * *

 

I was dozing. I’d refused to take more than half a pain pill, wanting to stay alert, and as a result I was halfway drowsy and halfway in pain. My phone was plugged in, turned to full volume, and every second I was waiting for a phone call from Sam, to say he was alright, that he was coming home, or from Dean to say he’d found him. 

Castiel’s voice pierced through the shallow layer of sleep and pulled me out. I got up and went down the hall and pushed open the door. “Cas?”

He was sitting up, hair plastered to his face, his skin pale. “It’s Sam,” he said, and I was at his side in an instant. “He’s in danger.”

“Where?” I said.

“There was a raid...the demon camp in Wellington, Texas. Heaven is saying it was Sam. They—”

I was already fumbling for my phone to call Dean. Castiel’s hand fell on my wrist. “Y/N—”

"Sam's in Wellington," I said when he answered. I could hear the highway drone in the background.

“It may be too late,” Castiel warned me. I ignored him.

“I’m already on his heels. Headed that way.”

“Hurry, Dean. Cas says he’s in trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?” he snapped. Then added, “Cas is there?”

“Demons. Dean—”

“I know. I’ll call you when I’ve got him.”

He hung up. I set the phone down on the bed. 

“Y/N...he might not like what he finds.”

“What’s that supposed—” but I couldn’t finish my thought. My whole body suddenly felt plunged in ice. My knees buckled; I slammed into the floor on my left side but barely registered the pain in my stomach over the onslaught of terror that suddenly gripped me. My vision swam. Castiel’s face loomed over me and I shrank back, curling into myself despite the pain jabbing at my core. I had to escape, but there was nowhere to go, so I squeezed my eyes shut and clenched tightly, shivering uncontrollably, crippled by fear until everything went black.  


* * *

It took Sam another five hours curving southwest along the state routes, but he was determined beyond reason. He was angry. He been wronged too many times: lied to and used by demons and angels and gods, manipulated against his conscience and his family, and he wouldn’t let this one slide. Never mind the voice that was tugging at the back of his mind, buzzing a reminder about the last time he’d sought revenge: someone had to pay.

By the time he reached the outskirts of Wellington, he was charged with the steady surge of a thundercloud. Despite the fury, the power, boiling within him, he felt calm. His eyes scanned the dark fields to either side of the highway for anything that stood out as what he might be looking for. After a few more miles, he knew he’d found it: a massive cattle barn, lit up by floodlights from its high, open windows, its domed roof a lustrous blimp against the dark sky. 

He pulled onto a gravel road and parked just beyond the reach of those lights and got out. He checked the Colt again, then walked straight toward the massive doors.

When the demons guarding the entrance saw him, two charged him instantly and the other turned and ran for backup, raising an alarm as he fled toward the doors. Sam caught him—fired the Colt and hit him dead in the back of the neck before he made it five yards.

The other two closed the distance before he could get off another shot. He pulled the knife, ran it along one’s throat after dodging a left hook, then drove it deep into the abdomen of the second. Blood spurted, hot, over his fist and he pulled back and wiped it across his jeans. The smell was sharp and overpowering, and for a moment he staggered backward, repulsed at himself for his instant arousal at its tang.

He pressed on, kicking the doors open with a bang. The barn was sectioned off the way the warehouse had been: a few humans and half-breeds caged in one corner, tables and charts of research spread along one wall, a makeshift lab far opposite him. But there were fewer demons than he remembered, maybe two dozen if that many, and when they saw him, silhouetted in the doorway, bloodstained and reeking of sulfur, they did nothing.

“Look who’s finally come home.” Sam didn’t recognize the vessel of the demon who spoke, a stocky, olive-skinned, male, but he knew most of them had likely found new ones when the warehouse in New Jersey had blown. “We’ve been waiting for you, Sam.”

He didn’t hesitate. He raised the Colt and fired. The demon exploded in orange light and collapsed. He faced the others. He was trembling in anticipation, his heart in his throat, and he knew this was wrong, that he shouldn’t be here, that it was suicide. And yet…

When they charged him, the Colt was forgotten. He reached with his right hand and clutched at the demon who led the fray—felt his hand wrap around that flayed and smouldering soul and  _ squeezed,  _ feeling it writhe in his grasp, a dying thing scrabbling for purchase on life until it was extinguished, the vessel dropping to the dusty floor. 

For a split second, the rest of them hesitated, hovering on the threshold of fight or flight until they surged forward. Sam swung his arm and a wave of them flew backward. The tips of his fingers tingled like a static charge. He snapped his hand out and caught them, one by one, extinguished them like he’d snuff out a candle flame. His limbs shook, the relief of latent power finally unleashed to their full potential, and he thought he would erupt from the force of it. 

It was like crushing grapes, they folded so easily in his hands. One after another he tore them down, knife slashing in one hand as he pulled them out of hosts or killed them outright with the other. He was overcome with such a rush of power and ecstasy like he hadn’t felt since his nights with Ruby, when her veins had opened to his lips and they’d hunted together in the dark. He remembered it, revelled in this high, this power, and he pushed harder. He felt everything intensified tenfold, and it was light and heat and ecstasy. This was righteous; he held the image of Y/N in his mind and knew they needed to suffer, that he needed to punish, for her protection and his own penance. 

By the end, his chest was heaving with the effort, his adrenaline spike crashing, and his body burned for oxygen. There was blood streaming down his face and pouring over his hands and he wasn’t sure who it all belonged to—them or him—but eventually they stopped coming and he could no longer see clearly, his vision clouded in shadow as he went to his knees among the carnage. He was panting, his head hanging against his chest, darkness hovering like a screen over his eyes and he blinked, trying to shake it away, but his hold on consciousness was frail. The scent of blood was thick and tangy on the air and he felt his stomach clench. This wasn’t right. He shouldn’t be here.

She came toward him—small and lithe and dark-haired, her eyes obsidian pools—and he thought she  _ was _ Ruby, come to deliver him again into the hands of damnation. He welcomed the familiarity of that dark embrace, someone to take him by the hand and lead him away from  _ this _ and toward something— _ anything _ —with the hope of resolution. She would guide him back where he belonged, back to the Cage, where he should have stayed to serve his penance at the feet of the Devil, where he couldn’t have broken things even further.

“Ruby,” he rasped, but when she crouched in front of him he knew, could just  _ sense  _ the difference. Rage swelled inside him again and he raised his hand, but she caught it. He had no strength to resist her and swayed backward.

He raised his eyes to hers, challenging her. He would kill her; he knew it was only a matter of time, but when his gaze reached her shoulders and looked beyond he lurched backward, a scream caught in his throat as he tried to scramble away. The walls of the barn had vanished, replaced by iron links, a crimson glow, hanging meathooks. He was immobilized, the smell of singed flesh stinging his nostrils even as the room grew suddenly cold.

A shadow fell over him. He looked up to see Judith smiling down at him. “Oh, Sam,” she sighed, shaking her head. “You  _ really _ shouldn’t have pushed so hard. You were already so fragile.” She lifted her hand and he couldn’t help it—he flinched back—and she laughed, an airy, emotionless sound, and brushed his hair back from his sweaty forehead. “I could just kill you. But this will be so much more fun.” 

She placed her fingertips against his forehead. He felt pain like white hot spikes had been shoved into his brain, momentary blindness, and when he could see again Judith was gone, replaced by the red eyes and snake’s grin of the Devil.

He tried to move, but the hands around his throat were ice cold shackles that rendered him immobile. Lucifer leaned closer until Sam could see nothing but his pupils, was overpowered by the aroma of smoke and frost.

“Hi, Sam,” he breathed.

Sam felt his bladder empty. His eyes rolled back into his head and he went limp, dropping to the dirt floor of the barn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah...sorry.  
> I know where I'm going with this now, so assuming I can squeeze in writing between all of my other life responsibilities, it shouldn't be as long of a wait for the next chapter!


End file.
